UsingRun-From-Flash.PDFVIP

Using Run-From-Flash Mode with the Excalibur Bootloader September 2002, ver. 1.0 Application Note 244 Introduction The Excalibur? bootloader is one of the system integration tools included with the Quartus? II software. This tool, invoked using the makeprogfile utility, creates all the software necessary to boot from flash memory and configure Excalibur devices. The makeprogfile utility merges the hardware design, the software design, and the embedded stripe configuration data to create a single bootable image. The Excalibur bootloader can also load memory such as SDRAM or on-chip SRAM with user-application software plus a branch to that section of code. In most cases, this is advantageous because executing code from flash is generally much slower than other types of memory. Run-from-Flash In some circumstances, you might want to run application code from flash memory. For example, where a non-speed-critical system has no SDRAM, Mode or in a system where the application code copies itself to the appropriate destination in memory, and then branches to it. In cases such as these, it is beneficial to use run-from-flash mode. Procedure Figure 1 on page 2 shows the procedure for using run-from-flash mode with the Excalibur bootloader. Altera Corporation 1 AN-244-1.0 AN 244: U