Design Tools - Others

[feldhaus]

Hi,

I am using the Spartan-3A DSP 1800A Starter Board under Ubuntu x64 and ISE Webpack 12.1 with a PC-3 parallel programmer driven by an up-to-date lib-usb wrapper.

Having had no problems configuring the FPGA directly over JTAG I wish to program my design into nonvolatile memory.  I have had three problems, each stemming from a work-around from the previous problem, none of which should exist.

1. The Intel S33 SPI flash is not programmable from iMPACT and the "XIP" tool (designed to program this part via the exposed SPI bus) will only run in Windows (and with a PC4 or PC-USB programmer).  I intend to replace the part with the M25P64 device, which is pin-compatible (and I understand is fitted in later board revisions) and supported within iMPACT for indirect programming.

So instead I have been trying to use the BPI flash...

2. Selecting the 28F128J3D in iMPACT, I am warned that data width is zero (but that the MCS file was (correctly) created with a data width of 8)... Clearly a data width of zero is nonsensical so the definition of the 28F128J3D device, for which no user parameters are available, must be at fault.

3. With the 28F128J3D part selected, or with the 28F256J3D part selected (as a test, since it does not have the zero-data-width feature) the indirect programming core is correctly loaded into the FPGA via JTAG but when iMPACT reaches "Populating BPI CFI ..." it crashes out silently, with no errors reported on the parent command line or in the log.  "dmesg" reports this is due to a segmentation fault.

Tail end of " _impact.log":

'1': Reading status register contents...
INFO:iMPACT:2219 - Status register values:
INFO:iMPACT - 0011 1111 1101 1100
INFO:iMPACT:2492 - '1': Completed downloading core to device.
INFO:iMPACT - '1': Checking done pin....done.
'1': Core downloaded successfully.
INFO:iMPACT - Created an MDM Uart Interface
INFO:iMPACT - Created an MDM FSL Interface
Populating BPI CFI ...

dmesg:

[  716.513926] _impact4[2696]: segfault at 5dd89ee6 ip 00007f475dc84711 sp 00007f47594b26f0 error 4 in libImpactBpiOperations.so[7f475dc78000+11000]

Any ideas?  I'm sincerely hoping that I don't get the same post-core-download fault after going to the trouble of sourcing and soldering the M25P64 SPI device.

Thanks,

Andrew

0xADF

[feldhaus]

Having replaced the Intel S33 SPI Flash with the M25P64 device, I can now use ISE's indirect programming to upload my configuration to the nonvolatile storage.

Regards,

Andrew

0xADF

[gregmeredith]

Also, iMPACT help has a Supported Devices section in the top level of the docs which outline what devices impact will support for indirect programing.

[jovliegen]

FYI,

Trying to write to BPI, using iMPACT ( 12.1(lin) App Version: M.53d), also segfaults

for JS28256P30 most of time. Strange thing that once in 20 or so, it does write

successfuly (no segfault occurs)

tailing dmesg gives (after a couple of tries):

[ 9711.470825] _impact4[5130]: segfault at 0 ip 00ef93bc sp b5dfeee8 error 4 in libImpactCommunications.so[ef3000+e000]
[ 9875.279085] _impact4[5149]: segfault at 0 ip 05c013bc sp b5dfeee8 error 4 in libImpactCommunications.so[5bfb000+e000]
[10032.159046] _impact4[5183]: segfault at 0 ip 088753bc sp b5dfeee8 error 4 in libImpactCommunications.so[886f000+e000]
[10125.606823] _impact4[5198]: segfault at 0 ip 085cd3bc sp b63fef58 error 4 in libImpactCommunications.so[85c7000+e000]
[10186.844248] _impact4[5220]: segfault at 0 ip 040283bc sp b6306ee8 error 4 in libImpactCommunications.so[4022000+e000]
[10807.764939] _impact4[5269]: segfault at 0 ip 057ec3bc sp b5af2ee8 error 4 in libImpactCommunications.so[57e6000+e000]