Re: [avr-gcc-list] Programming Atmel FPGAs from AVR?

[Daniel O'Connor]

On Sunday 20 May 2007 16:22, Rick Mann wrote:
> On May 19, 2007, at 11:41 PM, Rick Mann wrote:
> > Has anyone tried developing a project with an FPGA, and programming
> > it from an AVR? I want to develop something that requires a LOT of
> > PWMs, and an FPGA seems like a good way to do that. But I wonder if
> > I could forego separate FPGA programming hardware, and just program
> > it from the AVR.
>
> As I read about the Atmel FPGAs I see that they can include an AVR
> core; there's hardly any point to having a separate AVR.

It could be nice for a variety of reasons IMO.

Yes the FPGA can include a AVR core but having an AVR there as a hard 
micro can make certain situations much easier - eg in the field 
upgrades.

The other thing is that yes there is the core available, but a) does it 
work with the FPGA you want? b) is it 100% compatible with the hardware 
AVR?, c) does GCC work OK for it?, etc..

I think you could fairly easily program the FPGA in slave serial mode 
(Xilinx FPGAs can do this, they are the only ones I have used), or you 
could implement a JTAG engine and get the Atmel tools to generate a 
STAPL file (or something similar).

-- 
Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer
for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au
"The nice thing about standards is that there
are so many of them to choose from."
  -- Andrew Tanenbaum
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