Design and implementation of the configuration circuit for FDP FPGA

This paper presents a configuration circuit used in the FDP (FDP: Fu Dan Programmable device) FPGA chip. This circuit could write configuration data into FDP and read back data from FDP successfully. Comparing with Xilinx Virtex Series FPGA chips, the smallest configuration section of which is one data-frame, the proposed circuit could write each single memory cell in FDP, providing more flexible configuration operations. A standard configuration interface, Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), is added in this circuit to replace using the expensive Xilinx Platform configuration Flash PROMs. A group of high precise sensitive amplifiers is adopted in this configuration circuit, which are used to magnify the read back data values. Through a novel write/read asynchronous FIFO structure in FDP, which divides the external interface and internal configuration circuit into two clock domains, designers could set the external clock and internal clock separately. Basic functions of the configuration circuit have been correctly verified by Altera DE2 development board platform. The post layout simulation results indicate via this configuration circuit, each data frame in FDP could be written in 4 mus, and could be read back in 5 mus. The total configuration time of FDP chip is about 6.5 ms.