Speeding up an electronics assembly line can significantly reduce costs for the manufacturer. In fact, a recent application note on in-line programming of SPI flash memory via JTAG and an FPGA showed programming times can be reduced from 22 minutes to 30 seconds. This saved the manufacturer more than $200,000 per year!
With constrained manufacturing resources and high customer demand, speeding up production throughput may significantly increase revenues.
The new application note analyzes two different on-board and in-line methods for programming one megabyte of data into a Micron SPI flash device (the M2P80) through a connected FPGA. One method describes how to program the SPI flash through a direct boundary-scan (JTAG) connection from the FPGA. The second method discusses inserting a Master SPI programming engine into the connected FPGA to speed up the programming even further.
Don’t miss our new application note: “SPI Flash/EEPROM Programming using FPGA and JTAG”. Download it here.
