Need to erase then completely overwrite FlexRIO FPGA flash

[JKneale]

Many of NI's products find their way into US defense areas, where we need to follow procedures to "sanitize" any memory per paragraph 14.1.16 of the ODAA Process Manual.  For flash memory, it means that we must perform a chip erase and then overwrite all addressable locations with a single character.

LabVIEW FPGA downloads the configuration to FlexRIO devices via an encrypted bitstream file, which makes it difficult to implement the overwriting step above. 

The RIO device setup would be able to download a bitfile, but I don't know of a way to create something to fill it up with a single character.  I know it wouldn't make sense in the FPGA - I just need to overwrite the flash.  I'd probalby execute an erase right after that, so the FPGA doesn't try to download it the next time it powers up.

Is there either:

• a means to directly access the flash on the FlexRIO, similar to the way that vi.lib\FlexRIO\FlexRIO_HostInterface.llb\FlexRIO_Host_EEPROMWriteByteArray.vi can directly access the EEPROM on the adapter modules
• a hacked lvbitx with all the EEPROM data set to a single character (besides what it looks like when cleared)

I know this all sounds like overkill, but the other alternative is destroying the flash chip or board.  Many defense/intel customers have this requirement, and every hack attack that you see in the news makes the security people less likely to grant any exceptions.