On 18 Aug, 18:18, Brad Eckert
tinyboot.com> wrote:> On Aug 18, 9:04Â am, jacko
gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>> Well in reality of budget constrants it's a CPLD with 1270 LEs, not a
>> mega dollar fpga.
>
> Altera's online store lists this CPLD at $22.70 for the cheapest one.
> Compare with $12.80 for the cheapest CycloneIII.
MAX II has 512*16 bit flash on board (good enough for a boot ROM),
Cyclone requires external flash. My devkit is MAX II ($100 full board
inc LCD unit).
> Okay, you probably want a secure bitstream. Spartan3A has that covered
> with their "Device DNA" trick. Digikey lists the XC3S50A-4TQ144C at
> $10.02 and it boots from a standard serial SPI flash. All pricing is
> in onesies.
Na a big feature will be JTAG reprogramming, and open VHDL (not
necessarily free). Custom reflashing is just part of the culture
possibilities. Cheap price, but the flash is external again, although
this maybe offset by external RAM cost. Low power is another MAX II
feature, getting battery powered performance. Not that it's a feature
needed by all, but headphone composition? Old SIM cards SMS space for
preset saving? (leave phone nums, as must not lose, good for sending
preset to others too.) The in system reprograming feature is also good
here, as self JTAGing between song setups.
> This is getting pretty far off-topic but it does illustrate that
> putting Forth in FPGAs is getting much more cost effective these days.
> Limited internal memory will favor Forth's shrewd use of resources for
> the next 10 years at least.
Ya it is the main reason over C.
cheers
jacko
