AN 886: Intel Agilex® 7 Device Design Guidelines

ID 683634
Date 10/09/2023
Public
Document Table of Contents

5.1.8.1.1. HPS-to-FPGA Bridge

GUIDELINE: Use the HPS-to-FPGA bridge to connect memory hosted by the FPGA to the HPS.

The HPS-to-FPGA bridge allows masters in the HPS such as the microprocessor unit (MPU), DMA, or peripherals with integrated masters to access memory hosted by the FPGA portion of the SoC device. This bridge supports 32-, 64-, and 128-bit data paths allowing the width to be tuned to the largest slave data width in the FPGA fabric connected to the bridge. This bridge is intended to be used by masters performing bursting transfers and cannot be used for accessing peripheral registers in the FPGA fabric. Send the control and status register accesses to the Lightweight HPS-to-FPGA bridge instead.

GUIDELINE: If memory connected to the HPS-to-FPGA bridge is used for HPS boot, ensure that the FPGA portion of the SoC device is configured first.

The HPS-to-FPGA bridge is accessed if the MPU boots from the FPGA. Before the MPU boots from the FPGA, the FPGA portion of the SoC device must be configured, and the HPS-to-FPGA bridge must be remapped into addressable space. Otherwise, access to the HPS-to-FPGA bridge during the boot process results in a bus error. To satisfy these requirements, use the FPGA First boot and configuration scheme. The standard tool flow for boot firmware generation takes care of mapping the HPS-to-FPGA bridge into addressable memory space.

For more information about the FPGA First boot and configuration scheme and generating boot firmware for the Intel Agilex® 7 HPS, refer to the Intel Agilex® 7 SoC Boot User Guide.