More than one configuration flash.


hamster

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How hard would it be to 'stack' more than one configuration flash on the board, provide some way to select which is active? Do the specs of the configuration bus allow for it?

Are there flash chips that allow you to select an active bank? I'm sort of thinking like a "dual bios" motherboard idea...

Mike.

PS. Like the new look of the forums!

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Mike,

I put some thought into this at one point, for the Spartan 3E I was thinking of connecting two SPI Flash chips. The simplest thing to do would be to put a switch that you could flip to connect the CS pin of whichever chip you wanted to boot from to the FPGA.

With the Spartan 3A and Spartan 6 they support multi-boot, so the same can be accomplished with multi-boot. The Benchy design will be the first test of a board that relies on Multi-Boot. I used the single channel, and cheaper, FT232H chip that is not connected to JTAG. Instead I plan to have a "golden" bit file that will always start first and will let the SPI Flash chip be programmed. After a couple seconds timeout it will boot the next bit file. Or there could even be a menu system to select which bit file to boot.

Jack.

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