FPGA? [scanned]

[Robert Michel]

Salve Markus!

Markus Stehr schrieb am Mittwoch, den 06. Dezember 2006 um 17:09h:
> >So when the hardwareproducer use a programmed FPGA inside a GNU/Linux
> >phone he has not to publish the VHDL code - right?
> 
> He dosnt have to, its hardware after all.
> But why shouldnt he? The OpenMoko dudes would ;)

:)) this would be fun when we would say to FIC please this FPGA,
some of these GSM chips, that SoC...

> >But when the v1 has a SPI connector, we could solder in a FPGA for
> >ourself - right? Are there FPGA with power mangement options - internal
> >timer to let the FPGA sleep for a while? Wake on signal?
> 
> Thats your bussiness, AFAIK you can send a FPGA to sleep by tristating
> some parts of it. Then you assign a PIN that listens to some sort of IRQ
> and when the said IRQ occurs you remove the tristate mode from the rest
> of the chip.

How efficient would this be? Or would it would it make sence to have
an external AVR/PIC to wake up again the FPGA?

> >Could FPGAs work with analog audio?
> Sure, only thing you would need is some dumb A/D and D/A converter as a
> FPGA is digital only, thats the drawback.
> (I dont mind being corrected here, though!)
:)
how much powerconsumpting would be e.g. an digital 2 channel
audio-mixer running inside a FPGA?

> I just read trough the Xilinx webpage and trough the datasheet for the
> Spartan but couldnt make out how much currency they realy eat.
> Could someone state some nummbers here?

Here some FPGA developer boards 
http://www.gaisler.com/cms4_5_3/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=9&Itemid=29 
starts with Spartan3 FPGA for 750 Euro.

But i found some postings that the Spartan3 is possible to buy for 10-20 Euro 
(price for ordering only one)

OpenMoko/Neo1973 is already a great step - much cheaper than
other embedded linux developer kits - so when it would be a FPGA
kit, too :))))

Is it right, that a FPGA is full programmable with a SPI connection?
*G*

rob