bitgen progarm in ISE

[fhleung]

Hi all, <p>I am a novice user of ISE and seeking for help. <p>ISE can generate programming files for FPGA. Formats like .bit .bin and .rbt <p>Application note XAPP502 can help a bit but I still got confusion on above the files types. <p>Which of the file type is finally downloaded to FPGA? <p>Which type can be loaded and processed by microcontroller? <p>Thank you in advance. <p>fhleung

 

[Jim Wu]

ISE can generate programming files for FPGA. Formats like .bit .bin and
..rbt
Application note XAPP502 can help a bit but I still got confusion on above
the files types.

Which of the file type is finally downloaded to FPGA?

..bit file

Which type can be loaded and processed by microcontroller?

They should all work if you know the file format. You can choose one that
works best with your hardware.

HTH,
Jim
jimwu88NOOOSPAM@yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/jimwu88/chips

 

[fhleung]

Which of the file type is finally downloaded to FPGA? <BR>
..bit is the binary file that contains header information that should not be downloaded to FPGA-- from application notes XAPP502

 

[Sean Durkin]

fhleung wrote:

Which of the file type is finally downloaded to FPGA?
.bit is the binary file that contains header information that should not be
downloaded to FPGA-- from application notes XAPP502
It all depends on what you want to use for downloading. If you use

iMPACT or Chipscope, then you use the .bit. iMPACT and Chipscope can use
the header information to make sure you're not downloading a bitstream
for a different architecture by mistake and such.

If you want to use a microcontroller to program the FPGA directly via
SelectMAP, then you can either strip the header from the bit, or you
could use the .RBT... The .RBT contains the bitstream in 1's and 0's in
a text file, that should be easy enough to process via software. But of
course the RBT is much bigger.

As a third, and probably preferred option for you: in ISE in the
"Generate Programming File"-section there's also an option to generate a
"Binary configuration file", that does not contain the header. If you
call "bitgen" on the command line, you'd use "–g Binary:Yes" as
parameters. This gives you a .BIN-file, which you can send to the FPGA
directly.

cu,
Sean

 

[Petter Gustad]

Sean Durkin &lt;smd@despammed.com&gt; writes:

If you want to use a microcontroller to program the FPGA directly via
SelectMAP, then you can either strip the header from the bit, or you
could use the .RBT... The .RBT contains the bitstream in 1's and 0's
in a text file, that should be easy enough to process via software.
But of course the RBT is much bigger.

Some users/tools use SVF files as a base for programming through the
JTAG port.

Petter
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