Daniel Phillips wrote: >On Sunday 10 April 2005 20:44, Timothy Miller wrote: > > >>What you get, when you buy the prototype board, is the same logic as >>what you get from the consumer board, except that it's slower and >>more expensive. Mind you, there'll probably be plenty of hobbyist >>things you can do with either the OGP logic on it, as well as your >>own. >> >> > >I completely grok the "more expensive" part. However, I will stick to >my guns on the point that if it is not _too much_ more expensive, we >will be wildly successful. Whereas if it is _really_ expensive, well, >I have my doubts about the "wildly" part. > >I'm doing a little research on 3S parts availability and prices, for my >own edification. This isn't 100% for sure yet, but it looks like the >3S4000 is several times as expensive as the 3S2000. Unless Xilinx is >willing to make an attractive offer, I would advocate going with the >3S2000. Besides, the 3S4000 will generate a lot more heat. > >The probability of getting free Linux tools from Xilinx is higher with >the smaller part, for some reason nigh beyond comprehension. > >Regards, > >Daniel > I have a tendency to go for the flexibility, especially in the early design stage. Someone on the list before as said that we could have the same footprint for 3 parts if I rememeber exactly : the 3S1000, 3S2000 and 3S4000. So for the first run of prototype card who will be used first by the hardware and software developer, I guess we should probably go for the 3S4000. with the goal of the design to be fitting in the 3S2000 part. So if we need more space than expected we will have it. Because the goal is now to create a working asic chip and with the added bonus that a FPGA card will be available for people who want to tinker with.
The first run of the FPGA card being a developement platform, mostly for in house use. You don't need to worry about the cost. For the second run who is going to be avalaible to the general public, cost will be a factor, also the estate needed for the implemantation of the working logic. For the heat produced by the 2 different chip that someting that is not bothering me for one simple reason it always depend of 2 thing : the amount of logic used and the frequency. So if the logic fit in the 3S2000 and you put a 3S4000 the heat emited will be almost equal for the same operating frequency. For the design tool I'm sorry but as I remember it you can only program at most a 3S1500 with the xilinx free webpack tool. If you want to know why the design tool are not free it's for a lot of reason. But principaly each bitstream for each device is particular, there's algorithm developed for optimising the logic that are sometime device specific, they want to sell their IP core so the less people have access to the tool the less competition and lastly producing chip is not always a high margin market, software on the other hand... Regards, Andr� _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
