Arria 10 SoC FPGA Remote update via HPS/linux

Hello everybody,

we are using an Intel Arria 10 SX with HPS on a custom board (10AS057K4F40E3SG with Quartus Pro 22.4). The boot flow is as specified on Rocketboards website (https://www.rocketboards.org/foswiki/Documentation/BuildingBootloaderCycloneVAndArria10 we modified relevant handoffs files and device trees according to board devices and HPS configurations.

Boot is working: we are using boot from SD, with early I/O release to reduce configuration time, keeping the core rbf and the peripherals rbf in the same .itb file, applying the first in the SPL and the second in uboot.

Now we would like to get a "remote FPGA update" feature without using the partial reconfiguration, having a full FPGA reconfiguration at every reboot. We know that HPS DDR3 relies on FPGA configuration so a full reconfiguration via Linux without reboot is not possible, but reboot is fine for our purposes. Power cycle the board is not.

Which is the best practice to follow? Our idea is to modify via SSH/TFTP the FIT image on the FAT partition (.itb) file and then issue a reboot command via Linux without having a power cycle of the board.

This way seems to not working as intended since at reboot the SPL sees that the FPGA is already configured (but with the old image) and it does not start the FPGA configuration. Is there a way to force it via SPL/uboot?

I hope I made myself clear, otherwise please ask me further details.

Thanks in advance.