EPCS 3rd Party replacement?

So....

more work vs. convenience

and

kinda expensive vs. really cheap.

I guess it would depend on what your deadline was. You could always get a first release out there with an Altera EPCS device and then change to one of the suggested replacements.

I wonder how hard it would be, however, to get these devices to understand Cyclone/CycloneII/StratixII compression/decompression....? If you're not using compression, you'll take up more space on the device, just for the SOF(s).

Cheers,

- slacker

really cheap is normally a compelling argument for most things!

some related talk at: http://www.fpga-faq.com/archives/65400.html (http://www.fpga-faq.com/archives/65400.html) 65417 & 65418

For Cyclone the decompressor is already in the FPGA - so these devices will support compressed bitstreams.

As you suggest it may be possible to consider these alternatives for volume.

http://forum.niosforum.com/work2/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rolleyes.gif