HSWAP pin for FPGA

Introduction

The HSWAP pin (also known as HSWAP_EN or PUDC) is commonly found on Xilinx FPGAs.
This pin controls whether the FPGA’s user IO pins will have a pull-up resistor
or float—when HSWAP is LOW, each IO pin will have an internal pull-up resistor.
For our example we’ll look at a particular Spartan-3 case, but this may apply to
other parts as well.

Consequences

In most cases, the JTAG and configuration control pins will keep their
pull-ups regardless of the state of the HSWAP—but in our experience we’ve seen
evidence of exceptions where the internal pull-up on some FPGAs has an effect on
compliance pins, such as INIT_B or PROG_B. This is an important distinction—in
certain cases INIT_B & PROG_B will have a dependence on HSWAP, so it’s often a
good practice to use external pull-up or pull-down resistors rather than relying
on the internal pull-ups to control these lines.

Example

Consider the four cases below:

Figure 1: Four cases of HSWAP & INIT_B/PROG_B configuration

Note: These cases make the assumption that the HSWAP_EN pin will have an effect
on PROG_B and INIT_B, but this is not always the case. Consult the device
documentation and errata for details.

In the cases 1 and 2, important compliance and input pins are connected to
strong pull-up/pull-down resistors and the state of HSWAP should have no effect
on the state of these pins. In case 3, INIT_B and PROG_B are floating and may
cause test failures. In case 4, the pull-down on HSWAP ensures that input pins
are pulled up, but does not cover the case where an input or compliance pin may
need to be pulled down.

Conclusion

When designing for boundary-scan test, it pays off to consider the
pre-configuration behavior of FPGAs. To cover all scenarios—though it may not
always be necessary for boundary-scan test—it’s a good idea to include a strong
pull-down on HSWAP during boundary-scan test, but consider the consequences of
pull-ups on IOs before relying on it for pre-configuration cases. Whenever
possible, include pull-ups/pull-downs on configuration and mode pins such as
INIT_B & PROG_B. As always, when in doubt check the device documentation!

Source: FPGA: HSWAP pin