On Tue, 2006-05-16 at 13:11 -0500, Robert Young wrote:
> >   I think a PIC solution would be great here. Am I
> > right?  
> 
> Yes you can do this but you will still need a relatively large
> non-volatile storage device unless you plan on booting through some
> other communication stream (RS232, USB, ethernet, etc) while connected
> to a PC.  Adding the serial EEPROMs for the FPGAs is not a big deal.
> Cheap parts.  Can be in-system programed via the above mentioned
> programming cables.
> 
> I've worked on systems were we had both EEPROM and the ability to
> reprogram the FPGAs from a processor (happened to be a DSP).  Worked
> great for field upgrades since the DSP was already talking to a monitor
> port and could reprogram its FLASH.
> 
> Several app notes on Xilinx's site about microcontroller booting, using
> a CPLD to boot and other fun stuff.

Another very cool option from Xilinx is called SystemACE. It's a chip
that reads a bitfile from a compact flash card (with FAT file system)
and programs the FPGAs.

It's especially good for cases where you'd normally end up with several
PROMs, plus it's much faster at programming the chips then through JTAG
(even during devel I use the SystemACE card instead of directly
programming the chips).

It also has a facility for storing multiple bit files, so with the
change of a switch and a reset your FPGAs are loaded with a different
config.

TTYL

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