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FPGA Configuration Question

This is a very simple question, but is something that I have taken for granted with all of the nice tools. For the Xilinx FPGAs (Spartan, Virtex), the ISE tools generated a .bit file for configuration for specific device.

If I wanted an MCU on my PCB to hold the configuration data and configure the FPGA on my target board, could I literally just send in the the data in the .bit file bit by bit with the CCLK, DIN, etc pins? Or do I convert this file into a different hex file for an direct bit for bit configuration.

Thanks, Eli Hughes

Reply to
Eli Hughes
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Eli Hughes schrieb:

Yes, this is possible. There is some rubbish at the begining of the file, but this is ignored, since the FPGA searches for the Sync pattern first.

The hex file is just fine for other tools to integrate the FPGA bitstream into your firmware.

Regards Falk

Reply to
Falk Brunner

Here's a good discussion on accomplishing FPGA configuration from MCU.

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Reply to
dand2k

Eli,

I don't know whether this is of any use:

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Apologies if you have already seen it.

-- Peter

Eli Hughes wrote:

Reply to
Peter Mendham

Eli I have doen this before with a Power PC and Virtex EM, the confgiuration will give you out a raw hex file which contains all the data need to configure the device, I then worte a simple script which configured this into a C array which could could be read through by the application software and written to the FPGA which was being configured via the select MAP mode. I beleive it is also possible to get an S Record version out which can be used to download into flash directly via a bootloader, the only reason i did it the way i did was our bootloader was not that complicated.

I have the schematics for this and the script if that would help ?

hope this helps

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