[rescue] Screw (software) emulators!

[rescue at sunhelp.org]

On Mon, 6 Aug 2001, joshua d boyd wrote:

> So, since you know something about fpgas, here are a few questions.
>
> How expensive is FPGA hacking to get into?

At the low end, cheap.  The software for the smaller chips is usually free
or close to it, and the "starter kits" are inexpensive.  These
manufacturers want you to get hooked on their products.

> What are good sources for introductory material?

Xilinx and Altera have some stuff on their sites.  Other than that,
auditing some classes at a local University can be a good investment.
comp.lang.vhdl and comp.arch.fpga have some useful FAQs.

> Like FlashRAM, don't FPGAs have a limited number of writes that they are
> good for?  If so, then how is this to play out in that FPGA based super
> computer that was in the news a few months ago?

Cell write life varies based on product but it can be relatively high.
Typically an FPGA would not be reprogrammed for new tasks on a millisecond
level, but on a second/minute level.

As an aside, the new Xilinx Virtex chips have up to 8 PowerPC cores
(500MHz/ea?) embedded on one die in addition to their FPGA functions.
Handy if you need to do local processing of incoming data.

-James