Skip to content

First steps with openFPGALoader

Install

Packages are available for Linux distributions, Windows (MSYS2) and macOS:

  • Arch Linux: sudo pacman -S openfpgaloader
  • Fedora: sudo dnf copr enable mobicarte/openFPGALoader; sudo dnf install openFPGALoader
  • MSYS2: pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-openFPGALoader
  • macOS: brew install openfpgaloader

More instructions for other installation scenarios are available in install.

Programming a development board

Just simply replace my_fpga_board with any FPGA board from compatibility:boards (or openFPGALoader --list-boards) in any of the two commands below, depending on if you want to program the volatile part of your FPGA (faster but not persistent) or the flash part of your FPGA (slower but persistent):

openFPGALoader -b my_fpga_board my_bitstream.bit # Program to SRAM
openFPGALoader -b my_fpga_board -f my_bitstream.bit # Program to flash
Note
When a bitstream file is compatible with both memory load and FLASH write, the default behavior is to load bitstream in memory.

Programming an "standalone" FPGA

If your FPGA doesn't come with a built-in programmer or if you prefer to use an external cable, you can specify a cable to use from compatibility:cables (or openFPGALoader --list-cables):

openFPGALoader -c my_cable my_bitstream.bit # Program to SRAM
openFPGALoader -c my_cable -f my_bitstream.bit # Program to flash
Note
For some cable (like digilent adapters) signals from the converter are not just directly to the FPGA. For this case, the `-c` must be added.
Hint
FTDI/FTDI-compatible cable users: the `-d` option lets you specify a specific FTDI device: 
openFPGALoader -d /dev/ttyUSBX
When the `-d` option is not provided, openFPGALoader will opens the first FTDI adapter it finds. Therefore it is preferable to use this flag if your computer is connected to multiple FTDI devices.

Troubleshooting

Please refer to troubleshooting.