I am designing a board with MAX10 FPGA. Due to want of space and security reasons, I want to place JTAG outside this board for programming. What is recommended distance that JTAG is to be placed for reliably programming the device
A few 10 cm is normally fine. Some programming adapters (e.g. some revisions of original Altera USB Blaster) have however unsuitable driver impedance that may cause ringing clock edges and programming failure with longer cables.