Reconfigure Spartan 3 without losing BRAM?

Sep 18, 2004 5 Replies

First reply

Symon

Hi Jake, I seem to recall you can read back the whole bitstream from Xilinx FPGAs. I think this includes the current bits in the BRAMs. If you knew which bits were which, you could extract the BRAM bits and plug them into the new bitstream you're downloading. Maybe. Cheers, Syms.

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J

Hi folks-



I was wondering if it is possible to reconfigure a Spartan 3 during operation without losing the BRAM contents or overwriting it. Is this possible with other FPGAs? Column-wise reconfiguration, would work, I suppose.



Jake


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S

Spartan-3 FPGAs only support column-wise reconfiguration. As long as you avoid reconfiguring the DCM/Block RAM columns, you should be okay.

-- SKK

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R

I have been meaning to send you an email to ask if the Spartan 3s are supported for modular reconfiguration yet. How is that going? I seem to recall that there were a couple of things that had to be resolved before the work could even begin. One was a "bug" or some aspect of the ISE software and the other was a work around for the fact that Spartan

3s don't have any tristate buffers. Have either of these issues been worked? How close are we to having a solution?
Rick "rickman" Collins rick.collins@XYarius.com Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY removed. Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com 4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX
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S
[snip]

The modular support using bus macros is not supported currently. It is supported via the "bitgen -r" approach, as described in the following Answer Record.

Is partial reconfiguration supported on Spartan-3 devices?

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--------------------------------- Steven K. Knapp Applications Manager, Xilinx Inc. General Products Division Spartan-3/II/IIE FPGAs

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--------------------------------- Spartan-3: Make it Your ASIC

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R

Unfortunatly I was not trying to do "partial" reconfiguration, but rather "modular" reconfiguration which seems to not be supported according to the answers record. At the time we last discussed this, I thought you had indicated that Xilinx was committed to supporting modular reconfiguration in the Spartan 3 devices. Is that no longer the case?

Rick "rickman" Collins rick.collins@XYarius.com Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY removed. Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com 4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX
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