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Since the inception of digital logic hardware in the 1970s, there has been a plethora of individual semiconductor digital devices leading to the ubiquitous TTL logic series still in use today (74/54 series logic), now extended to CMOS technology (HC, AC, FC, FCT, HCT, and so on). While these have been used extensively in printed circuit board (PCB) design and still are today, there has been a consistent effort over the last 20 years to introduce greater programmability into basic digital devices.
One of the reasons for this need is the dichotomy resulting from the two differing design approaches used for many digital systems. On the hardware side, the drive is usually toward ultimate performance, that is, faster, smaller, lower power, and cheaper. This often leads to custom integrated circuit design (Application Specific Integrated Circuits or ASICs) where each chip (ASIC) has to be designed, laid out, fabricated, and packaged individually. For large production runs this is very cost effective, but obviously this approach is hugely expensive (masks alone for a current silicon process may cost over $500,000) and time consuming (can take up to a year or even more for large and complex designs).
From a software perspective, however, a more standard approach is to use a standard processor architecture such as Intel Pentium, PowerPC or ARM, and develop software applications that can be downloaded onto such a platform using standard software development tools and cross compilers. This type of approach is obviously quicker to implement an initial working platform; however, usually there is a significant overhead due to the need for operating systems, compiler inefficiency and also a performance reduction due to the indirect relationship between the hardware and the software on the processor. The other issue from a hardware perspective is often the compromise necessary when using a standard platform, for example will it be fast enough? Another key issue when designing hardware is having access to that hardware. In many processor platforms, the detailed hardware is often difficult to access directly or efficiently enough to meet the performance needs of the system, and with the rigid architecture in terms of data bus and address bus widths on standard processors, very often there is no scope for general purpose IO (Inputs and Outputs) which are useful for digital designers.
As a result, programmable devices have been developed as a form of intermediate approach: hardware design on a high-performance platform, optimal resources with no operating system required and reconfigurable as the devices can be reprogrammed.
Manufacturer:Xilinx
Product Categories: Embedded - FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Array)
Lifecycle:Active Active
RoHS:
Manufacturer:Xilinx
Product Categories: Contrôleur logique
Lifecycle:Active Active
RoHS: No RoHS
Manufacturer:Xilinx
Product Categories: Embedded - FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Array)
Lifecycle:Active Active
RoHS: No RoHS
Manufacturer:Xilinx
Product Categories: FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Array)
Lifecycle:Active Active
RoHS: No RoHS
Manufacturer:Xilinx
Product Categories: Memory - Configuration Proms for FPGA's
Lifecycle:Obsolete -
RoHS:
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