On Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:43:35 -0400, Andre Pouliot <[email protected]> wrote: >> Did I miss something ? > Not much, You were right about the name, I saw I was wrong after sending > it. It should teach me to reread before posting. you are forgiven :-)
> But I wasn't talking about smartfusion for graphics but more for an example > of how reconfigurable computing could look and that a few device do exist > with the capacity. There also all the Virtex 2 and 4 with the powerPC > embeded in the FPGA that can work as reconfigurable computing. Still the > smartfusion is more affordable. but - (smart)fusion has analog interfaces and Flash arrays for storing data - Virtex are faster, larger, more powerful However I'm not sure about the reconfigurability. Fusion can't reprogram itself because the CPU core is part of the array and it would be flushing itself, partial reconfiguration is not possible with Actel (though some parts like Flash data blocks can be selected) SmartFusion has a separate "hard" processor so it is probably possible that the chip can reflash its logic array itself. I have not looked at the datasheet. Anyway, it takes a lot of time (30s ?) to reprogram the array (depends on the size) so adaptative computing is not possible. Virtex is necessary then. > The interest on on-chip flash is that everything is configured when powering > up the system. With external flash it can take some time before the chip > being programmed. That's part of the reason why we have the lattice xp2 > doing the pci bridge on OGD1. The spartan take a few second to be properly > programmed and it would be too long for a computer bios. Yes, however I was refering to the data storage, not the configuration/bitstream. If all you need is being ready at powerup, the ProASIC3 (the base of the Fusion family) is more adapted than xFusion : cheaper, no analog, configuration is in Flash but the data (often : code and data for the embadded CPU) can be stored outside in a $0.30 SPI flash. It's a bit like the XP2. I am sticking to Actel for several reasons but Lattice has interesting parts as well :-) yg _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
