[sdiy] Designing Analog ICs

[ASSI]

On Wednesday 07 September 2011, Matthew Smith wrote:
> Since the start of this conversation, I've been racking my brains to try
> to recall who I saw doing mixed-signal FPGAs, and whether these were
> actually FPGAs with on-board ADC/DAC. Seem to recall they might have
> been a) aimed at motor control and b) expensive.
> 
> Must have been one of the Big Three in FPGA-land.

Nope.  Search for FPAA and some of the names below on a boring weekend.

The first one I know of was from Motorola (MPAAxxx), but it didn't go 
anywhere.  There are a few publications that still mention it, IIRC it was 
switched capacitor based.

FhG IMS was doing a multiplier-based FPAA around the same time as a research 
project, if I didn't have a few printouts with preliminary data even I 
wouldn't believe it has ever existed.  They called it the Analog Silicon 
Breadboard (ASB101).

Then came Zetex TRAC, now Diodes.  You can still buy it, but as far as I can 
tell it is not further developed.

Then Anadigm (originally Anadyne, technology came from Pilkington, spun out 
via Motorola) and their line of FPAA.

Both TRAC and Anadigm are not very useful for voltage controlled circuits.

Cypress PSoC has some analog function blocks, but again too limited to be of 
much use for synth related things.

Lately some microcontrollers have integrated opamps in an attempt to soak up 
peripheral IC.

Latest research on FPAA:
http://www.imtek.de/mikroelektronik/content/projects/fpaas_en.php
 
> I really like the idea of doing it all in Verilog, but then I come from
> Planet Digital ;-)

Try Verilog-A...


Regards,
Achim.
-- 
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