Cyclone® 10 GX Core Fabric and General Purpose I/Os Handbook

ID 683775
Date 7/08/2024
Public
Document Table of Contents

7.4.1. Configuration Images

Cyclone® 10 GX devices offer a new remote system upgrade feature which provides direct-to-application and application-to-application updates. When the Cyclone® 10 GX device is powered up in the remote update programming mode, the Cyclone® 10 GX device loads the factory or application configuration image as indicated by the start address pointer at 32'd0 address of the EPCQ-L device.

Each Cyclone® 10 GX device in your system requires one factory image. The factory image is a user-defined configuration image that contains logic to perform the following:

  • Processes errors based on the status provided by the dedicated remote system upgrade circuitry.
  • Communicates with the remote host, receives new application images, and stores the images in the local non-volatile memory device.
  • Determines the application image to load into the Cyclone® 10 GX device.
  • Enables or disables the user watchdog timer and loads its time-out value.
  • Instructs the dedicated remote system upgrade circuitry to start a reconfiguration cycle.

You can also create one or more application images for the device. An application image contains selected functionalities to be implemented in the target device.

Store the images at the following locations in the EPCQ-L devices:

  • Factory configuration image— PGM[31..0] = 32'h00000020 start address on the EPCQ-L device.
  • Application configuration image—any sector boundary. Altera recommends that you store only one image at one sector boundary.
  • Start address (0x00 to 0x1F)—storing the 32-bit address pointer to load the application configuration image upon power up.
Figure 148. Start Address and Factory Address LocationThe following diagram illustrates factory, user data, application 1, and application 2 sections. Each section starts at a new sector boundary.


Note: Altera recommends that you set a fixed start address and never update the start address during user mode. You should only overwrite an existing application configuration image when you have a new application image. This is to avoid the factory configuration image to be erased unintentionally every time you update the start address.