JTAG communication between FPGA and PC

[netturan]

I'm new to FPGAs and I have a Lattice MachXO2 FPGA to which I need to send data from my PC via the JTAG interface. I know it's mostly used for boundary testing and programming but can I use it for real-time communication?
If so, how?

 

[barry]

The short answer is no. Why would you want to do this? There are MUCH easier ways to do this: SPI, I2C, UART.

 

[FvM]

As far as I'm aware of, MachXO2 has no features to interface the JTAG logic with FPGA fabric as provided e.g. by Intel. But if you really need to use the JTAG interface for user mode communication, they can be configured as GPIO. I agree however with Barry that an industry standard commmunication interface would be preferred.