Hi,
I am new to FPGAs and in as much I may be looking at a solution to my needs from the wrong perspective.
So i shall list my needs intermixed with and concluding with what i think i need/want in a 'simple' FPGA board.
A) will be running cryptographic primitives and massive amounts of number theory computations at it B) i need anywhere from 400,000 to 1.2 million gates (so probably a spartan 3 from xilinx, maybe cyclone 2 i dunno am more familiar with xilinx at labs) C) i need decent I/O rate ... not this bogus load via cable / serial blah blah blah. i am not sure what the USB 2.0 spec is nor if most cards that have that I/O ability ever reach its peak. so either i need pci interface or usb 2.0
D) fpga clock rate of 100mhz or greater E) i do NOT need other fluff useless-for-my-purposes components on the card [such as led interfaces, serial/parallel I/O, microcontrollers etc ad nauseum] F) if the avg i/o rate for the card is good so i can shuttle my data in and out then i wouldnt really need any high speed sram/dram. if it isnt so hot then 8 mb of 200 mhz or faster memory would be nice (heck 16 or
32mb if possible :) G) cost under $280 US [although if there are any 2 fpga cards [totalling over 1million gates] with the above features for under $450 US i'd be interested in that] H) software none needed i'd be creating some *nix and maybe win32 tools to go with my needs and upload the circuit layouts i need to run my gigs of data through (but if it came with some of its own gui layout tools that would save me a few weeks creation time *grin* so I wouldnt knock a gifthorse in the mouth)i looked at ... some from memtec that came closest to my needs spartan3LC and umm spartanIIPCI200 (or some model # close to that) also saw one from mesanet pci interface that was close ... but really seems like they have so many extra components driving up the price that would be completely useless to my needs
NOW if no one knows of a manufacturer that has such a board does anyone know of enough freeware docs out there and can point me to them so i could make my own minimalist boards to the specs i need? [ee is not my thing nor is soldering but i can if i have to lol i prefer the closest i get to hardware is inserting new componentsin a pc and assembler routines for karatsuba/kcm/fft code :)] C++ya, xkey