The TinyFPGA Programmer is a very simple USB-JTAG bridge designed to program bitstreams onto TinyFPGA A1 and A2 boards.
The programmer firmware appears as a generic USB serial port when you connect it to a computer. Control of the GPIO pins on the programmer is through this simple serial interface.
Commands are encoded as 8-bit bytes with a command type field and data payload. The payload is typically a 6-bit bitmap representing the GPIO pins of the programmer.
| 7:6 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Command Type | TMS | TCK | TDI | TDO | RC1 | RC0 |
| Opcode | Command |
|---|---|
| 0 | Configure Input/Output |
| 1 | Extended Command (Unused) |
| 2 | Set Outputs |
| 3 | Set Outputs and Sample Inputs |
For each of the GPIO pins, set the direction of the pin.
- 1: Set GPIO pin n to INPUT
- 0: Set GPIO pin n to OUTPUT
Reserved for future command expansion.
Set each of the output pins to the given values.
Set each of the output pins to the given values and return a byte representing the current values of the input pins.
For serial interfaces like JTAG this protocol divides the maximum possible bandwidth by 8 from the USB to JTAG interface. This means we might get 0.5MHz JTAG programming speed. That speed is actually fast enough to transfer all the data to the FPGA in a few seconds. However the configuration flash on the FPGA actually needs a fair bit of time after erase and write operations that will slow down the programming operatuon.
What can really slow down programming is the turnaround time for reading back data from the FPGA.
For the most part data is going in one direction from the host computer to the programmer to the FPGA.
For these cases we can use the Set Outputs command and not wait for any data to return. However
there are times when we may need to poll a status bit to see if the FPGA has finished an erase or
write operation. In this cases we will want to also sample the inputs and check the status. These
should not be timing sensitive because the FPGA is already busy.
Verifying the configuration data on the other hand could take a long time if not done carefully. The application talking to the programmer should make sure to write as many commands as it can before attempting to read back the data from the serial interface. Rather than paying a penalty for the turnaround time on every read bit, we pay for it after reading dozens of bytes. This should allow read-back of the configuration data to be relatively quick and painless.
The project is currently in progress. Initial schematic and PCBs have been designed along with firmware for the USB microcontroller. The PCBs have been received from OSH Park and programmed with the firwmware.
The biggest task left is still developing the Python libraries for interfacing with the firmware and driving the JTAG interface and is currently in progress.