Programming EP2C35F672C6 FPGA purchased

Question

I am new to FPGAs & board development. This semester, I was introduced to Quartus II, VHDL, and FPGAs. I have uploaded several basic designs onto the DE2 Board, which has an EP2C35F672C6N FGPA on it. However, every time I power up the board, I must re-download the configuration. I was wondering if someone could explain what sort of Altera FPGAs, similar to the EP2C35F672C6, retain their configuration once set until a new configuration is uploaded to the board.

Also, I purchased an EP2C35F672C6 FPGA chip from Altera. However, I do not see a way to program it using my current board due to the fact that the FPGA on my DE2 board appears to be smelted onto it. Are their special boards out there you can use to configure standalone FPGAs? Thank you.

Answer 1

The FPGA can load its configuration from a flash chip. The FPGA itself cannot store anything non-volatile. You must use it on a board and configure it each time the power comes on. Up until now you have been doing this with a JTAG cable (I assume).

You can also program the EPCS16 serial flash device on the DE2 board. According to the user manual, page 24, this can be programmed over JTAG by assigning a POF file to the device in the chain. Then the FPGA will configure from that flash device each power up.