The audio IC Wolfson WM8753 is cool :)))))

[Gabriel Ambuehl]

On Tuesday 12 December 2006 18:15, Richard Franks wrote:
> > As can a GPIO. Stop with the fpga nonsense and get a devboard to play
> > with
>
> That's a little bit harsh, dude. I agree that an FPGA is not a panacea,
> but all we have is ideas just now, so there's no harm playing with them!

Not meaning to offend, but it does seem a bit ill-conceived to stick a power 
and room hungry FPGA (the whole point of those things is to be flexible, yes, 
but that use comes at a cost) on a portable device that runs on battery and 
then make everyone who wants the NeoXXXX foot the bill. 

I'd much rather have you guys convince FIC to add some sort of real expansion 
slot (something along the line of mini PCI or PC 104 or heck make it CF1 and 
stick http://www.picocomputing.com/products/cards/e12ep.php into it). A stub 
connector on the back side would be enough (and would not considerably 
increase the size of the device when not in use)so you can stick big modules 
on the back of YOUR devices (see those iPaq addons of years gone by).

For 99% of the intended audience (which is already somewhat geekier than your 
average cell phone owner at least for starters) a faster CPU (Freescale i.mx 
31 anyone ;) and some more hardware on board (USB2 and WiFi out of the box) 
will be orders of magnitude more useful than a FPGA (a concept that is 
unknown to most anyhow). For those who really want to hack the hardware, they 
can still get their own FPGA.

It just doesn't make economic sense to put a FPGA in a phone that's supposedly 
for the mass market. Not in my book anyway.
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