Do you name your FPGA?

schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

dont know about FPGAs but some Xilinx PLDs have names, see below:

MONET 95108XL RENOIR 95144XL PICASSO 9536XL VAN_GOGH 9572XL

Often an FPGA or ASIC is a project on its own rather than simply part of another project. Projects get names to have some identity rather than "that thing John's working on... no the other thing." If the function can describe what the device is for (e.g., the video processor in the PDX1800 follow-on product) you don't want to tip the inductry that you're using cutting edge FPGA technology in a next-generation product due to hit the market in 2Q06. Code names help keep things a little more secure.

Beanut,

Typically companies (and government agencies) have provided names for their internal projects. This seems to be fairly common.

Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, etc....

I have heard some say that this is meant to keep secret/confuse competition, as saying you are working on 'Pinatubo' gives very little information as to what you are really working on.

Personally, I like to think that by calling it something innocuous, it leaves room for Marketing to decide what they really want to call their new product.

Artists, mountains, novels, minerals, politicians, movies, anything is fair game.

I used titles of novels for one string of releases. It was actually quite amusing to send out the "Dr. Faustus" release, followed by the "Paradise Lost" release.

Austin

ASICs are like your children, it takes such a long and ardious time to make them and once you tape them out you can really never get rid of them and you can only fix their small mistakes by making small minor changes without touching their base. You just learn their quirks, make changes in other pieces of their environment (fix firmware, change pcb, etc) to accomodate them. That's why people name their ASICs. FPGAs are at most like a pet you buy for one of your children. If it becomes too much of a hassle, you just return it or flush it down the drain and get another one. That's why you don't find named FPGA designs too often.

MK,

Great! I love it. Nice analogy.

I like to tell folks that FPGAs are the only chips that wake up everyday and say "Who I am going to be today?"

Aust> >

With attitudes like that, its no wonder why 1000 cats/month are euthanized at the San Jose animal shelter alone.

It may be for security, but I think it's more that if boards, programs,

chips etc. have names everyone involved instantly know what you are talking about

And they often use something boring like xyz123400 and they may decide that they want to sell a reduced version of the same thing with a name xyz123401

And related names often mean related projects

the San Jose animal shelter alone.

We have no pets and have no interest in supporting an industry which is about breeding, selling, destroying all the animals and all the feed which goes to them. Did you hear about the couple which left their pets to pet sitters and their two boys home alone to gamble in LV ? There are millions of children in Africa who get AIDS from their mother because they can't afford the drugs necessary to prevent the transmission. My extra money goes to support that and my time for lobbying the government to restrain the pharma companies who protect their IP in sub-saharan Africa.

..and of course most projects will be started long before the Marketing Dept. have thought up a flashy name, researched to check that it doesn't clash with an existing product, doesn't mean anything rude or embarrasing in other languages (Like the Mitsubishi Pajero in Spanish, the Toyota MR2 in French etc.) so it needs to be called something in the mantime, and as this initial name will not usually reach the outside world, why not use something silly/amusing/rude etc.

Thanks all. In the spirit of pets and FPGA's, I think I'll start naming my designs after my pet snakes. Boa and Anaconda are too easy, let marketing try to sell the latest "Albino Corn Snake Processor".

I called one of my design 'chef' just to symbolize that it was "cooking" all incoming signals into something "digestable". (at the same time thinking of Chef in the South Park series :) This name was never used in daily speech cause it was the only FPGA design, and I was the only FPGA programmer in our company at that time. I guess this naming was kinda inspired by the chipset of the Amiga computer wich I used to know very well. I also found the messages written on the PCB's mysteriously interesting :)