Hello everyone, is there anyone who knows about the FPOA (Field Programmable Object Array) by Mathstar? Did anyone ever used this kind of programmable logic? As they say in their site FPOA can proccess in very high frequencies such as 1 GHz. is there any suggestions about this silicon? thank you very much.
tsemer
We'll be using the FPOA in an upcoming product. The array consists of a large number of ALU modules, which are really small microsequencers with a code size of 8 instructions. In addition to these there are a smaller number of register files and multiplier/accumulator modules in the array.
Around the array are a number of peripheral controllers and larger block memories. Data flows though the array at the common clock rate of up to 1 GHz, using pipeline registers when it needs to traverse a large distance. This keeps the clock rate predictable under all routing conditions, but creates design pipeline changes in the process. The development tools help with this, but are still somewhat primitive compared to FPGA synthesis and P&R tools.
You should not consider the FPOA as an FPGA replacement, because there are some things that FPGA's do better. If you could imagine a Xilinx FPGA with mostly DSP blocks and block rams and only a small number of slices, you would get a feel for the kind of tasks that would be hard to implement on the FPOA. On the other hand if you have a streaming data application that is very hard to implement at speed in a standard DSP chip, but too complex to fit well in an FPGA, the FPOA would be a good choice.
HTH, Gabor
MathStar is hosting a webinar tomorrow. Good opportunity to learn more:
Tuesday November 14th
9am PT/Noon ETFPOA: The Next Generation of Programmable Logic MathStar's new Field Programmable Object Array (FPOA) is a 1 GHz, reprogrammable device offering up to four times the performance of FPGAs. This presentation shows the advantages of FPOAs and describes the capabilities of its "silicon objects," which are composed of arithmetic logic units (ALUs), multiply-accumulators (MACs), and register files (RFs). It will also show how FPOAs can be used in video codec applications, and how the FPOA's performance stacks up against other alternatives. To register for this event go to:
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