Why does u-boot hang on Intel® Arria® 10 SoC devices when I use External FPGA Configuration with no external memory?

Description

Due to a problem in the SoC EDS software version 16.0 and later, u-boot-socfpga might fail to boot for Intel® Arria® 10 SoC designs when:

• External FPGA Configuration is selected in BSP-Editor / u-boot-socfpga
• There is no External Memory Interface (EMIF) connected to the HPS

Resolution

To work around this problem, in u-boot-socfpga boot loaders generated from the SoC EDS software version 16.0, download and apply the u-boot-socfpga_arria10_sdram.patch.

The patch makes changes to uboot-socfpga/arch/arm/cpu/armv7/socfpga_arria10/sdram.c,  adding a #define for the non-existence of an external memory interface.

To apply the patch, follow these steps:

1. Copy the .patch file to the uboot-socfpga directory created when make was run from your bsp-editor generated BSP (software/<bsp name>/uboot-socfpga)
   git apply <filename>.patch
2. Move to the bsp directory: cd ..
3. Rebuild u-boot:  make clean; make.
4. Write the updated uboot_w_dtb-mkpimage.bin to your sdcard / QSPI.

This problem is scheduled to be fixed in a future release of the SoC EDS software.