JAM and Xilinx/Altera CPLDs

[Ville Voipio]

We have two CPLDs on a board (Altera EPM7256A and Xilinx
XCR3064XL) and would like to program them with a single tool.
To complicate things further, the tool should work in Linux.
The download cable we use is Xilinx Parallel Cable III, but if
this is a real problem, it can be replaced by something else.

It seems there are no tools which would do this without some
patching. I have been thinking of taking the Altera JAM player
and patching it for the Xilinx cable. This should be quite
straightforward, as only a few things need to be changed in
the jamstub.c. (BTW, has anybody any experience on compiling
the JAM player with gcc?)

Then the workflow would be:

- Altera: Quartus II Web Edition -> .jam -> JAM player
- Xilinx: ISE WebPack iMpact -> .jam -> JAM player

The big question, however, is: does it work? I have no doubt
about the Altera path, as JAM is invented by Altera. But what
about the Xilinx JAM compatibility. iMpact seems to be able to
produce either .svf or .jam files, but does either of these
work reliably (svf throuth svf2jam) with the JAM player?

On the Xilinx site I found something on the need of patching
the JAM player. Is this enough, or is there still something
else?

TIA,

- Ville

--
Ville Voipio, Dr.Tech., M.Sc. (EE)

 

[Ville Voipio]

"Antti Lukats" <antti@case2000.com> writes:

there is JAM for linux version at sourceforge
compiling JAM is pretty easy, modifying for new hardware also

I tried finding the sourceforge version, but could not. Do
you have a more precise pointer?

I think I forgot to mention that the software should work in
Cygwin, as well. So, the PPI requires some thinking. My first
idea is to take the PPI driver from avrdude, where it is able
to handle both Cygwin and Linux.

patching: we had big big big problems programming Xilinx devices with JAM
player
anyway we tried the output files from iMpact just didnt work, not directly
not
via SVF2JAM

This is exactly what I was afraid of.

I got some patch to fix some issues in JAM player,

Xilinx site does carry a patch, so maybe I'll try it first.

this info may be outdated I have not checked it with latest iMpact version
maybe the compatibilty is better now

I'll need to check.

Thanks!

- Ville

--
Ville Voipio, Dr.Tech., M.Sc. (EE)

 

[Antti Lukats]

"Ville Voipio" <vvoipio@kosh.hut.fi> wrote in message
news:i3kr7x4y48q.fsf@kosh.hut.fi...

We have two CPLDs on a board (Altera EPM7256A and Xilinx
XCR3064XL) and would like to program them with a single tool.

there is JAM for linux version at sourceforge
compiling JAM is pretty easy, modifying for new hardware also

patching: we had big big big problems programming Xilinx devices with JAM
player
anyway we tried the output files from iMpact just didnt work, not directly
not
via SVF2JAM
I got some patch to fix some issues in JAM player, and I think wrote an
utility
to fix something in either SVF or JAM so got some thing to work.

this info may be outdated I have not checked it with latest iMpact version
maybe the compatibilty is better now

antti
xilinx.openchip.org

 

[Andre]

Ville Voipio <vvoipio@kosh.hut.fi> wrote:

We have two CPLDs on a board (Altera EPM7256A and Xilinx
XCR3064XL) and would like to program them with a single tool.
...

Then the workflow would be:

- Altera: Quartus II Web Edition -> .jam -> JAM player
- Xilinx: ISE WebPack iMpact -> .jam -> JAM player

Are you sure that the free version of Quartus will output .jam files
?? I thought you had to pay for the full version to anything other
than program directly from the IDE ??

 

[Ville Voipio]

armcc@lycos.com (Andre) writes:

Are you sure that the free version of Quartus will output .jam files
??

No, I am not sure. I did not even come to think of an alternative that
evil. By looking at the Altera site they do not mention anything about
this. This feature is not on the list of "if you pay more, you'll
get these", but that does not necessarily mean anything.

I thought you had to pay for the full version to anything other
than program directly from the IDE ??

Possible. Let's see... Anyway, if this is the case, the CPLD on our
next design does not start with an "A". Not giving out the software
for free is one thing. Not telling the extent of the lobotomy of
the "free" version is another.

- Ville

--
Ville Voipio, Dr.Tech., M.Sc. (EE)

 

[Subroto Datta]

armcc@lycos.com (Andre) wrote in message news:<ae5c06e9.0402110118.5a1ba41f@posting.google.com>...

Ville Voipio <vvoipio@kosh.hut.fi> wrote:

We have two CPLDs on a board (Altera EPM7256A and Xilinx
XCR3064XL) and would like to program them with a single tool.
...

Then the workflow would be:

- Altera: Quartus II Web Edition -> .jam -> JAM player
- Xilinx: ISE WebPack iMpact -> .jam -> JAM player


Are you sure that the free version of Quartus will output .jam files
?? I thought you had to pay for the full version to anything other
than program directly from the IDE ??

Yes the Quartus II Web Edition does output jam files. The way do so is
to Open the Quartus Programmer, load the pof/sof file and Use the File
Create/Update dialog.

Both the free Web Edition and the Quartus II Full subscription have
the same capabilities for both programming and for
generating/converting programming files.

- Subroto Datta
Altera Corp.

 

[Ville Voipio]

sdatta@altera.com (Subroto Datta) writes:

Both the free Web Edition and the Quartus II Full subscription have
the same capabilities for both programming and for
generating/converting programming files.

Thank you very much! Very good. (Still, I'd like to suggest that
the differences between the Web edition and The Real Thing were stated
very clearly on the web page.)

BTW, do Altera have any plans of making Linux-compatible
programmin sw? At least in our case we'd like to keep
Windoze far away from the production line.

- Ville

--
Ville Voipio, Dr.Tech., M.Sc. (EE)

 

[Rob Kruger]

Ville Voipio <vvoipio@kosh.hut.fi> wrote in message news:<i3k65ednatp.fsf@kosh.hut.fi>...

armcc@lycos.com (Andre) writes:

Are you sure that the free version of Quartus will output .jam files
??

No, I am not sure. I did not even come to think of an alternative that
evil. By looking at the Altera site they do not mention anything about
this. This feature is not on the list of "if you pay more, you'll
get these", but that does not necessarily mean anything.

I thought you had to pay for the full version to anything other
than program directly from the IDE ??

Possible. Let's see... Anyway, if this is the case, the CPLD on our
next design does not start with an "A". Not giving out the software
for free is one thing. Not telling the extent of the lobotomy of
the "free" version is another.

- Ville

The free Quartus II Web Edition software does output .jam files. You
enable this by selecting Assignments -> Device -> Device and pin
options -> programming files tab.

The following page lists the general features of Quartus II Web
Edition software and what additional features customers get by
purchasing a software subscription:
http://www.altera.com/products/software/pld/products/quartus2/sof-quarwebmain.html

Rob Kruger
Altera

 

[Andre]

rkruger@altera.com (Rob Kruger) wrote:

The free Quartus II Web Edition software does output .jam files. You
enable this by selecting Assignments -> Device -> Device and pin
options -> programming files tab.

Hmmm, I'm sure I tried that but the check boxes were always grayed out
??

I even tried to manually edited the project file to enable the missing
programming file formats, but never managed to generate a .jam or .jbc
file.