FPGA

Ole Tange openmoko.org at tange.dk
Fri Dec 8 00:26:45 CET 2006


On 12/6/06, michael at michaelshiloh.com <michael at michaelshiloh.com> wrote:
> On 12/5/06, Markus Stehr <bastetfurry at ircnet.de> wrote:
>
> >  What do you think about giving the Neo1973 a FPGA?
>
> I was thinking more about this last night. My first reaction was "great", but
> as someone else posted, what do you get for the increased cost, besides speed?

I am still wondering if the cost is going to be that high: If we can
emulate more of the existing components in the FPGA then we will save
some cost on these.  Your observation of the serial port is just one
example.

> What hardware peripherals would you add, if you had this options?
>
>    USB 2.0?
>    That second SIM card?
>    Other FLASH card interfaces?
>    I2C, SPI, One-Wire?
>    VGA out (although I suspect it would require too big an FPGA)?

OpenCores already have one:
http://www.opencores.org/projects.cgi/web/vga_lcd/overview

>    Bluetooth?
>    Game device interfaces?
>
> I welcome your feedback.

A thing to take into account: All the ideas does not have to fit on a
FPGA. You can reprogram the FPGA in about 10 ms. So you can have
different sets of "devices". So four sets of functionality you do not
use at the same time, say,

* GPS+GSM
* video-decoder
* WiFi+GPS
* Ogg/Vorbis-encoder

You cannot use them simultaneously, but you can change set in 10 ms.


/Ole




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