Someone on Linkedin asked about a stand alone device for programming the flash for FPGAs in the field or in a production environment. There doesn't seem to be anything currently available like this. Looking at the big three manufacturers I see at least two formats for the files that might be used. Xilinx and Lattice use SVF with Xilins offering support for a compressed version called... XSVF of course. Altera uses JAM. JAM seems to be a JEDEC standard while SVF appears to be a defacto industry standard developed by a company.
I'm curious why two standards came about. Was there a problem with using the version the company developed? I'm assuming the industry version came first and the JEDEC version came later. Or is that wrong? It won't be too much trouble to support both, but I don't get why both standards exist.
How do you program production devices? I know in large facilities they pay big bucks for JTAG hardware and software that will work across the spectrum including test and diagnosis. I'm thinking there is a market for a more limited device that is just used to program the non-volatile memory in embedded systems in an efficient manner for production and field upgrades. Any thoughts?
Rick