Can a Cyclone V SE SoC HPS Boot without any external memory?

[Ian_Maw]

We have a system where we would like to reduce board space and cost. We would like to completely remove the SDRAM, meaning that no external RAM would be available.

The current system SDRAM capacity is hardly used (a few hundred KB).

Ideally we would remove the SDRAM and use block memory to provide additional RAM beyond the HPS 64MB on chip RAM.

We will likely use a very thin OS, so not fully bare metal.

Does anyone know for certain whether this can be done please?

Thanks,

Ian

[aikeu]

Hi Ian_Maw,

Are you intend to add on chip memory on FPGA side?

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/docs/programmable/683130/22-1/on-chip-memory-ram-and-rom-intel-fpga-ip.html

Thanks.

Regards,

Aik Eu

[Ian_Maw]

Hi Aik,

Yes, I was hoping that we could use some of the RAM normally used by the fabric.

If we did though we would still need to boot the HPS, and we are planning to boot the HPS before configuring the FPGA if possible (without an FPGA configuration memory for the fabric if possible).

This said do you think we could boot without external RAM?

Thanks,

Ian

[aikeu · Accepted solution]

Hi Ian_Maw,

You are not able to utilize the on chip memory on FPGA side without configuring the FPGA fabric in the first place thus you can only utilize the HPS 64Kb ocram.

I think will need to consider if the size is a concern in your application.

Thanks.

Regards,

Aik Eu

[Ian_Maw]

Thanks Aik Eu

[aikeu]

Hi Ian_Maw,

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Thanks.

Regards,

Aik Eu