I'm looking at the cost of serial configuration devices from Altera and am a little shocked at how expensive they are. Digi Key sells the EPCS4 for $13, which seems steep for 4Mbit of storage.
A quick glance at Digi-Key's website suggests I can get an SPI-compatible PIC chip and a 4Mbit SPI FLASH memory for less than $4, which means I should be able to program the FPGA from the PIC for a third of the cost of Altera's solutoin.
Before I go off and reinvent the wheel, does anyone know of a prepackaged solution for programming an Altera device (I'm using a Cyclone) with a microcontroller that I can just drop into my project? I'm sure I can't be the first person to do this. If anyone has a website describing a similar setup, I'd love to see it.
Thanks,
-Nevo