Why does the HPS in Agilex™ 5 FPGA/Agilex™ 3 FPGA fail to load components from the QSPI device when the hardware design or SDM FW comes from Quartus® Prime Pro 25.1 and later?

Description

Due to the QSPI Ownership Selection feature introduced in Quartus® Prime Pro 25.1, the HPS request for the ownership of the QSPI via the QSPI_DIRECT command can be either accepted or rejected by the SDM firmware.
This request typically occurs during the FSBL stage, and the SDM firmware decides to reject or accept the request based on the QSPI Ownership setting defined in the hardware design.

This affects scenarios such as Remote System Update (RSU), where the RSU components reside in the QSPI device, as well as any other boot flow that relies on the HPS loading components from QSPI, such as HPS booting from QSPI.

The QSPI Ownership feature is not backward-compatible. Mixing .sof files generated from Quartus® Prime Pro versions prior to 25.1 with SDM firmware from 25.1 or later (and vice versa) may cause compatibility issues.
This problem can also be observed when porting a hardware design from a Quartus® Prime Pro version prior to 25.1 to a newer version, because by default, Quartus® Pro assigns the QSPI ownership to the SDM.

Resolution

To avoid this problem, follow the recommendations provided below.

In RSU scenarios, do not mix applications created with Quartus® Prime Pro versions prior 25.1 with applications created with 25.1 or later.

Do not mix. .sof hardware designs created with Quartus® Prime Pro versions prior 25.1 with SDM FW from Quartus® Prime Pro 25.1 and later, and vice versa.

In new hardware designs whose boot flow depends on the HPS loading components from the QSPI device or when porting these from Quartus® Prime Pro versions prior 25.1 to a more recent version, make sure to select the HPS as the QSPI owner in Quartus® configuration (from Assignments > Device > Device and Pin Options > QSPI Ownership configuration), because by default Quartus® assigns the QSPI ownership to SDM and missing this configuration will make HPS to fail to load these components.