Reconfigure FPGA another using NIOS II SoC

Altera_Forum · ‎10-17-2015

HI, I'm working on a research project on hardware software partitioning. I'm trying to edit the hardware task list dynamically and I'm in a trouble doing reconfigure another FPGA using NIOS II processor. Currently I'm running NIOS II processor on Altera DE2-115 board and I have DE-0 board too. I'm trying to see is there any possibility to reconfigure FPGA on DE-0 using NIOS II processor which is running on DE2-115.

Thanks. Your opinion is welcome.

Altera_Forum · ‎10-17-2015

There are plenty of ways to dynamically reconfigured FPGAs. However, the development kits you have listed probably do not support reconfiguration by another board, simply because that is not something needed on a development board.

The four FPGAs on this board are dynamically reprogrammed by the PowerPC and FPGA seen on the right-side of the image:

https://www.ovro.caltech.edu/~dwh/carma_board/

This document describes reconfiguration:

https://www.ovro.caltech.edu/~dwh/carma_board/fpga_configuration.pdf

A NIOS II processor could be used to enable a reconfiguration controller like this, or it could "bit-bang" the passive serial interface on the FPGA.

Cheers,

Dave

Altera_Forum · ‎10-19-2015

Thank you dave. This actually helps. Cyclone IV devices are not supported for this which are the FPGAs included on above kits. But anyway these links lead to some valuable information.

Thanks

Anusha

Altera_Forum · ‎10-20-2015

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Cyclone IV devices are not supported for this

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The Cyclone IV devices support passive serial mode and configuration from SPI flash. Take a look at the TS4 design documentation on this page:

https://www.ovro.caltech.edu/~dwh/wbsddc/

(The board never made it to the 'real-world', but the design files have useful info)

If you need fast configuration, then you can use a MAX II or MAX V device as the programmer (passive serial controller), and Quad-SPI flash as the data source. The MAX II/V can read the flash at up to 100MHz, so you can program the Cyclone IV fairly quickly.

Cheers,

Dave