It looks like I will have to get educated on CPLD/FPGAs on short notice. My application at the moment will be the replacement of small microcontrollers for military and commercial aviation projects that do not want/tolerate software/firmware (some customers and government regulations do not consider CPLD/FPGA to be containing software, which to a large extent is a matter of opinion, but this is not a thread I wish to start at this time). The FAA in particular puts a much greater burden on microcontrollers than CPLD/FPGAs when it comes to demonstrating compliance to DO-254 in safety critical applications like battery charging.
The microcontrollers I have been using are typically from 20 to 100 pins (Silabs 8051 family) with a lot of integrated peripherals. I understand I will have to use external peripherals like ADC, DAC, probably clock oscillator and such with a CPLD/FPGA, where these functions are currently integrated in my microcontrollers. Part of the requirement is that the devices be immune (as much as practical) from SEU malfunction. I was told Atmel (or Actel?) makes flash-based small FPGAs that may fit the bill. Most SRAM devices are deemed to be excessively sensitive to SEU, even though I cannot imagine how a CPLD/FPGA could be made that does not use SRAM at all. Maybe it's a matter of quantity? A few working registers may be an acceptable risk, but the entire device operating from SRAM is not acceptable? I am looking for any information/recommendation on which families to look into. Thanks in advance, Didier KO4BB -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Miles Sent: Thursday, February 04, 2010 8:43 PM To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement Subject: Re: [time-nuts] CPLDs for clock dividers Yeah, Xilinx 11 is pretty nice. I'm usually allergic to IDEs, especially theirs, but I've been pretty happy with 11 so far. I find myself using it instead of my tried-and-true makefile for FPGA work, and that's saying something. -- john, KE5FX _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
