[sdiy] Taking a Step towards Digital Synthesis?....

[Paul Schreiber]

Getting back to the FPGA at hand:

Just looked at the dev system Jim bought. Big $$$ (like $700 or so). But the
300,000 gate IC (in 208-pin PQFP) is only $35 in *single* quantity!

This is boggling: I did a DSP emulator (OEM'd by Texas Instruments for a 'toy'
LPC speech DSP) using 2 Xilinx XC4000 series (the top-of-the-line parts in like
1995). One was a 160-pin part with 4000 gates (all it was programmed for was a
32-bit wide 5:1 mux with latches) and the state machines (all 9 of them) ran in
a 10K gate with 208-pins. And then there were the 2 *one-time* programmable
serial EPROMS at $15.32 each! The 2 ICs together, in 75pc quantites, were $108
AND $192 each, RESPECTIVELY. And they ran at a staggering 20MHZ :) I remember
the day the Xilinx package arrived (UPS ground) and there was like $26,000 worth
of parts in it. I didn't even want to *touch* the stupid thing.

I'm getting a pain sitting here thinking about 300,000 gates for <$35.

Oh....at Tandy I got the TRW rep to *sample* me one of those MPT-16C, 16 x 16
bipolat logic multipliers with the extruded heat sink on top. IT was for my
2900-bit slice Z80 emulator (it ran at 20Mhz, too and outran a VAX 11/780). I
reacll that part was $320ea.

The good old days....sigh.....

Paul S.