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[Resolved] [Mimas V2] How to program onboard SPI flash

Discussion in 'FPGA Boards' started by sacusa, Mar 17, 2018.

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  1. sacusa

    sacusa New Member

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    How do I use the onboard flash memory to store my own data? I want the data to begin at a fixed address so that an onboard bootloader can copy that data into the RAM.
     
    sacusa, Mar 17, 2018
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  2. rohith

    rohith Administrator Staff Member

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    rohith, Mar 18, 2018
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  3. sacusa

    sacusa New Member

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    How do I generate a .bmm file? It seems like it is only generated for MicroBlaze projects. I did find the documentation for data2mem which specifies the format for .bmm files, but the process seems tediously long. Isn't there any automated way?
     
    sacusa, Mar 18, 2018
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  4. rohith

    rohith Administrator Staff Member

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    Hello @sacusa,

    .bmm is not needed for creating flash images. It is only required for merging .elf program files into the bitstream (.bit) files.

    For adding extra data to flash memory you need to use `promgen` command. For example, check the command below:

    Code:
     promgen -w -p bin -c FF -o download -s 16384 -u 0 SaturnV3Linux_rp.bit -data_file up 500000 saturn_linux.bin -spi
    This command creates a single SPI Flash Image with bitstream located in the region starting from address 0x00, and the custom data (Linux Kernel in this case) is located in the flash image from the address 0x500000 onwards.

    -Rohit
     
    rohith, Mar 19, 2018
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  5. sacusa

    sacusa New Member

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    Oh okay! Is there a way I can use that .bmm method to initialize a block memory? So far, it seems like the whole data2mem method is incompatible with memory generated using CORE generator.
     
    sacusa, Mar 19, 2018
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  6. rohith

    rohith Administrator Staff Member

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    Hi @sacusa,

    I would recommend searching the Xilinx Forums on this since we haven't encountered this usage scenario yet. There should be lots of resources available on the Xilinx Forums since this is a very common requirement during usage of BRAM.

    -Rohit
     
    rohith, Mar 19, 2018
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  7. sacusa

    sacusa New Member

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    Alright. Thank you very much @rohith.
     
    sacusa, Mar 19, 2018
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