The Quartus® II programmer supports programming of serial configuration devices via JTAG and the Serial Flash Loader which are a higher density than the device that the .jic file was originally targeted at. For example a .jic file that was targeted to an EPCS64 device may be used to program an EPCS128 device using the Quartus II programmer.
SVF and JAM files that are generated from the .jic file may only be used to program the targeted device.
The Quartus II programmer will allow an EPCQ256 device to be programmed by a .jic file targeted at a lower density device. In this case FPGA configuration may fail due to a difference in the format of the data for devices of 256Mb or greater.
The Quartus II prgrammer is scheduled to be updated to not allow programming of EPCQ256 devices using .jic files intended for lower density devices.