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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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14 years ago

Recommend small FPGA and SDK

I need to solve a high speed logic issue with a circuit I am designing. Currently I am solving it using a bunch of XOR and NAND gate IC's but they are taking up 30% of my board space and I am looking for a small package solution to replace them with so I can get some space back. I am thinking that an FPGA is a good solution but I am not finding small stuff just big chips with hundreds of IO pins that can run an entire cell phone.

Altera comes up a lot in my searching so I am hoping someone here may know what I am looking for. I just need something basic that will let me program my simple logic into an IC that I can solder on to my circuit board and I only need 32 IO but anything less then 100 would be good.

I would like an SDK that costs less then $1000. I would like it more if it runs in Linux but that is not a deal breaker if the chip is small and the SDK is affordable.

2 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
    Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
    14 years ago

    What is high-speed to you?

    The older MAX II CPLDs work fine too. Altera jumped from MAX II to MAX V, so ignore the missing roman numerals in the part number sequence :)

    I've used the EPM570 for implementing power-control and FPGA configuration controller logic. They've got plenty of logic elements for what you want to do. The logic runs at 125MHz and the devices are close to full.

    A couple of comments though:

    Pros: The MAX CPLDs have on-board EEPROM, so they are sort-of instant turn-on devices. They have ~4MHz oscillators on them that you can use, though an external clock might be useful depending on your application.

    Cons: The MAX CPLDs do not have on-chip RAM, so you cannot use the Altera NIOS processor (though, this is not a con for your application).

    Either of the MAX CPLDs would work fine for you.

    Cheers,

    Dave