[sdiy] FPAA for analog synthesis?

[Eric Brombaugh]

That's part of it - building an analog array requires a lot of 
compromises for just the reasons you mention. The end result is a device 
that's "jack of all trades, master of none". Then, when a designer 
considers it for his project he looks at the downsides and realizes he 
can do it cheaper/smaller/lower power with analog circuits that are 
designed for the specific application. End result - they just don't have 
the pull that microprocessors and FPGAs do.

Eric

On 03/02/2010 04:14 PM, cheater cheater wrote:
> isn't the problem really that you need lots and lots of different
> devices? digital stuff can pretty much all be synthesized out of just
> two operators... with analog all this stuff can work different from
> one another! You can't really take, say, 5 types of transistor and
> synthesize everything that is out there, can you? And that's only
> touching transistors and not any other parts, especially passive! i
> think this shows how digital electronics are a MUCH narrower category
> than analog electronics...
>
> D.
>
> On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 23:33, Eric Brombaugh<ebrombaugh1 at cox.net>  wrote:
>> On 03/02/2010 01:56 PM, Joel B wrote:
>>>
>>> Anyone here experimented with field programmable analog arrays?
>>
>> I've done a bit of work with Cypress PSoC chips that have a small analog
>> array. They work fine for relatively low frequency stuff but aren't great
>> for most audio work.
>>
>> Over the years a lot of companies have tried to make FPAAs work and none
>> have been really successful. The biggest problem is that the
>> power/size/performance trade-offs you can make with discrete and small-scale
>> analog tends to favor arrays only in situations where extreme
>> reconfigurability is required, and in most of those situations one is better
>> off digitizing early in the chain and going with microprocessors or FPGAs.
>>
>> Like nuclear fusion, reconfigurable analog arrays are a technology that will
>> likely always be a few years in the future.
>>
>> Eric
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>