Re: cPLDs and FPGAs we've known and loved (or hated)

On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 08:40:00 -0800 (PST), Winfield Hill
<hill@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Feb 4, 11:34 am, John Larkin
<jjlar...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 07:08:36 -0800 (PST), Winfield

<winfieldh...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
We're making the tables for AoE 3rd-ed chapter 11, the
2nd digital chapter, in which cPLDs and FPGAs are
discussed. What are your favorite companies and parts,
the ones you always use, and what are the ones you used
to use but stopped (and why), and what are the parts you
steer clear of? What about cPLD vs FPGAs? Opinions?
What method(s) do you use to design the parts? Thanks!

PEEL 22CV10 was a breakthrough, but we rarely use them for new
designs, one in the last year, for some safety logic in an otherwise
analog box.

Nowadays the Xilinx Spartan 3 fpga's are great. The tiny VQ100 and bga
packages pack a huge amount of logic into a tiny space. We use the
free WebPack software,and use an on-board uP to configure the fpga's
at powerup.

John

John, you like your products to have a 5 to 10-year
production lifetime, right? How do you deal with
the rapid turnover of cPLD and FPGA part offerings?

We can still buy 10-year old Actel and Lattice and Xilinx parts, and
22V10's. The prices go up, but it's better than redesiging. A couple
of our best selling products are full of 4000-series and Spartan 1
Xilinx chips.

Discretes, especially RF stuff like mmics and phemts, are a bigger
problem. A lot of that stuff is being killed by ICs. We've also had
problems with adc's and dacs lately, older parts going away,
especially in dips.

John

.

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