Why does the Fast Passive Parallel or the Passive Serial configuration from the Parallel Flash Loader IP fail after updating only a page with a new configuration bitstream, but not the option bits?

The Fast Passive Parallel (FPP) or the Passive Serial (PS) configuration from the Parallel Flash Loader IP may fail when the following two conditions are met.

• A page is updated with a new configuration bitstream, but the option bits are not updated
• The compression option or the encryption option is applied to a Programming Object File (.pof)

The option bits contains the start address and the end address of each page.

Although you can input the end address of each page using Block Address Mode in the Convert Programming File tool or the Programming File Generator tool, the end address is always determined based on the configuration bitstream size while the start address can be set to the address you specified.

When the compression option or the encryption option is used in a .pof, the end address of each page may vary based on the configuration bitstream size every .pof generation.   

When the end address of a new configuration bitstream is larger than the previous one, if only a page is updated but the option bits remains, the Parallel Flash Loader IP doesn’t work properly and the configuration fails.

You can apply one of the following workarounds to this problem.

1. Update both a page and the option bits when programming a .pof
   
   
2. Set sufficiently large end address when generating a .pof.
   For example, if the end address based on the bitstream size is ranging from 0x000C0000 to 0x000DFFFF,  set sufficiently larger address than the range like 0x000FFFFF to the end address in the option bits.
   • Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro 20.2 and prior, and any version of Inel® Quartus® Prime Standard
      Store customized option bits with a sufficiently large end address instead of the option bits automatically created by the Intel® Quartus® Prime software using your own solution
   • Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro 20.3 and later
     Manually set end address using the Block address mode.  The Block address mode is located in the following location.
     Convert Programming File tool - SOF Data Properties
     Programming File Generator - Edit partition window in Configuration Device tab
     
     You can find the option bits format in the following document.
     Parallel Flash Loader Intel FPGA IP Core User Guide - Storing Option Bits