Method and implementation of FPGA configuration based on serial communication

Abstract

A method of field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) configuration based on serial communication is introduced in the paper, which is aimed at solving the challenge that FPGA configuration is virtually impossible through shared approaches in quiet a few special occasions. In this paper Xilinx 7 series is chosen to be the target configuration FPGA and Spatran3-AN works as the controller of configuration procedure. Serial communication is employed for the data transmission between Spatran3-AN and the host computer based on the requirements of reliability and universality. Spartan3-AN receives the user defined commands or data packet sent by the computer via universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART), besides, the corresponding operations such as writing the data packet to the flash or reading flash and data packing are implemented to achieve target FPGA design improvement. The performance of the method is verified sufficiently in the paper. Thus the proposed method can achieve efficient and reliable configuration of FPGA.