Kyle_Jackson

@malexander Thanks a bunch for this, Michael! I appreciate your continued efforts on this issue. We've already swapped the flash on the Cmods we have on hand. I'll work on migrating the project from 2017.2 to 2019.1 and make these changes so I'll be ready when we need some more.

@malexander The part number is exactly the same, N25Q032A13EF440F. I do understand changing again would just introduce a whole new layer of potential issues. I do recommend making some changes to the reference manual, though, as it currently states: I know now that "drop-in" applies to the footprint of the device package only, whereas I obviously took it to mean something different. Nowhere does it state that the different parts require source code or design changes on the part of the user. That would have been a helpful note to save the inexperienced (like me) much troubleshooting time. Thanks also for the code snippet. I'll see if I can get that working when I have a chance. For the moment, we've simply replaced the flash ICs on enough modules to carry us for a while.

Thanks for that information, reddish. We're lucky to have someone very skilled at PCB rework, thus it's fairly trivial for us to replace the Macronix flash IC with the Alliance Memory Micron clones. At our relatively low volumes, the additional cost and time is negligible. I can confirm that the Alliance ICs look just like the Micron ICs to the Xilinx SDK and Vivado, and they flash and run just fine. Digilent, it might be worth looking into these Alliance Memory ICs, which truly are a "drop-in replacement" for the Micron ICs, for future product runs.

Thanks, zygot. It is frustrating that Digilent called the Macronix flash a "drop in replacement" for the Micron in their reference docs when it's apparently not. Thanks, Ana-Maria. I've made some progress on figuring out what's going on, but no progress towards a solution. Debugging from the SDK the SPI bootloader seems to crash when it tries to access the flash. This project was created in Vivado 2017.2. In the SDK source there's no device information for Macronix flash, nor is it an option in the QSPI block customization in Vivado. I opened the project in Vivado 2020.2, and there is now the option to select Macronix flash in the QSPI block customization as the slave device. However, enough stuff has changed between these versions that I can't move forward due to other errors and due to my inexperience I have no idea how to fix them. After some further searching I've discovered Micron has obsoleted the flash used in these boards, hence the switch to Macronix. It's really unfortunate that these CMOD boards have the same part number but require a change to the original design to work. Alliance Memory seems to have purchased to rights to manufacture these legacy Micron parts, so I'm going to try replacing the Macronix flash with this Micron-like part and see if that works. Hopefully device and manufacturer IDs remain the same and it Just Works. If that fails I suppose my next step is hire a contractor to get our project running in a newer version of Vivado. Or, perhaps just re-implement this fairly simple project in an MCU.

Bump! Any ideas here? I feel like the solution must be something simple I'm just missing.

We've been using the CMOD A7s for some time without issue. Recently, we received a batch of boards with Macronix flash chips instead of the Micron chips and while they seem to program fine from the SDK, they don't seem to run the firmware after reset. Unfortunately, our FPGA developer is no longer here, and I have extremely limited experience with this stuff. I'm an MCU guy, not an FPGA guy. Other than selecting the correct memory device when programming the flash from the SDK, is there anything else I need to change for these new boards with the Macronix flash?