[sdiy] More Xilinx 3E board comments

[Paul Schreiber]

> I guess I'm asking for the cutoff point, can anyone throw out some possible 
> project types
> that could be done with the PicoBlaze?
>
> Showing my complete and utter ignorance, I'm not even sure what the MPU does - 
> I'm
> guessing MIDI stuff?  Obviously, the FPGA does some of the work, I assume at 
> the
> direction of the MPU?  Are the docs any better for the PicoBlaze?  Sorry for 
> dumb
> questions - I will have plenty more come Saturday.

The PicoBlaze is on the order of 8051s/small PICs/small AVRs. You get a C 
compiler and all the tools needed to make it work. The MicroBlaze has a much 
slicker "MPU Builder Wizard" app that let's you quickly build a custom MPU from 
the ground up just by selecting from menus (RAM, ROM, I/O pins, # of timers, 
etc). There are many more add-on peripherals in the library that connect to the 
Micro than the Pico. But that's not to say the Pico is useless: it can most 
certainly handle MIDI processing. Remember, 99.99% of developers are using 
"other people's money" so what's $500? Pfffttt.....

Answering other question: the $150 gets you *everything* you need software-wise 
AND the demo board. I did a Xilinx 4000 series design around 1999: the Xilinx 
*schematic capture* software was $3500, the Verilog compiler was (gulp) $14,000 
and the 10,000 gate part alone was $168ea. (2 per board). Oh, and the Verilog 
simulator was $4500 and only ran under Win3.11!

The 3E, 100K gate part with 100 I/O pins is $9ea :)

Paul S.