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A project log for TinyFPGA Programmer

A dirt cheap open hardware USB-JTAG board designed to program TinyFPGA A1 and A2 boards.

luke-valentyLuke Valenty 08/31/2017 at 07:290 Comments

I squashed a few more bugs in my Python code and was able to successfully program and verify the flash in a #TinyFPGA A-Series board.  At the same time that I'm developing a Python module to communicate with the #TinyFPGA Programmer, @Xark has been working on a solution using Lattice ispVM to more closely integrate with the Lattice tools.  He's discovered the SRAM can be programmed in about a dozen seconds using the #TinyFPGA Programmer.  Flash programming and verifying on the other hand is taking the Python module about 3 minutes.  

I believe flash programming is so slow because there is currently a lot of overhead for each JTAG bit of data transfered.  Combine that with verification and it just takes time.  To remedy this I'm planning on adding a new serial acceleration command.  This command will allow the JTAG data to be transfered across USB about 16x faster and should reduce the overhead in the FW as well.

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