How to boot from SPI Flash?

[Altera_Forum]

I have design with spi flash to store my firmware and sdram to run it from. 

My EPCS is too small to run code from it.  Can anyone give me boot-loader code to boot my system from SPI Flash? My SPI flash is ST M25Pxx.  If I understand well, the boot-loader can integrate to the NIOS within the hardware image. Is that correct?

[Altera_Forum]

Hi motal, 

 > I have design with spi flash to store my firmware and sdram to run it from. > My EPCS is too small to run code from it.  You really shouldn't need much code to load a small application (a 2nd stage boot loader) that pulls your code in from an SPI device. How much room is left on your EPCS?  > If I understand well, the boot-loader can integrate to the NIOS within the > hardware image. Is that correct?  Yes -- or you could try to replace/modify the default bootloader in the EPCS peripheral -- have it load from your SPI device rather than the EPCS device. From a practical point-of-view, the EPCS is just an SPI device that you don't get to do pin assignments for ;-)  Regards, --Scott

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---  originally posted by smcnutt@Jan 25 2007, 06:48 PM how much room is left on your epcs?  --- Quote End ---     After compression of my hardware image it's allways fit exactly to my EPCS1 - 128KB = 1MBit. So I can't put any software (even a little boot-loader) on the EPCS.  I could write the low-level code to access the SPI Flash myself, but I'll be glad to get ready code, if someone already write that.  2nd option. I saw SPI Flash core in OpenCores.com - it is possible to tell the SOPC Builder to reset from SPI memory with this core? - normally the SOPC Builder doesn't recognize SPI interfaced as memory. How can I add this core to SOPC builder?

[Altera_Forum]

Hi motal, 

 > After compression of my hardware image it's allways fit exactly to my EPCS1 - 128KB = 1MBit. ... > I saw SPI Flash core in OpenCores.com - it is possible to tell the SOPC Builder to reset from > SPI memory with this core?  Logic, code, whatever ... if you have no room left on your configuration device you're in an unfortunate position. Perhaps you should use a bigger configuration device. ;-)  In any regard, I don't think I was very clear in my last post:  > or you could try to replace/modify the default bootloader in the EPCS peripheral.  The EPCS controller uses on-chip memory that contains a small bootloader. If you are _already_ using the EPCS controller, you can try to replace the existing bootloader. Provided your (bootloader) implementation is smaller than the default, it should fit in your EPCS.  Regards, --Scott