Hi
just a few FPGA related news
Actel
ProAsic PA3 Engineering samples PA3 250 (not 600E !!) will be available Q3 NO WAY to get any engineering silicon before that. Q3 may be the last day of Q3 so Q4 end of year seems as more realistic. production volumes few weeks later ?
PA4 (PA3+) - even as it was on the roadmap more than years ago the roadmap is no less clear than before, eg no fixed plans at all
Altera
Was there! This time there really was Altera directly and not some rep pretending to be Altera. I got a look at the Cyclone Cubicum and did see what I expected to see, halfway hidden was the FTDI chips that is used in Altera USB Blaster. I am 99% sure thats FT245BM so making DIY Altera USB Blaster cable should only a matter of writing the VID/PID to the EEPROM and connecting JTAG to the FT245 ok, maybe a litte more
at EBV stand there was PCIexpress board with Altera GX on it, but when I wanted to know is it available for purchases then the answer was YES! After asking second time another guy did check it out for me and then it was not so much YES any more, there was no answer it will be inquired, etc... most likely not available.
There was also a real nice Altera Cyclone 2 board with
3 USB host and 1 USB device connectors and lots of other things price EUR 249 should be available alreadyLattice
was there in a tinybooth. but nevertheless was interesting - one thing new to me was the Block RAM in 5000M PLDs so far I have never paid attention to that.
the "xp" thing, well all unofficial, the best info I was able to squeeze was that a press announcement about it is expected in less than 2 months and that the xp is basically EC/ECP with added Flash on chip, there should be possible to indirect self reprogramming by connecting the JTAG pins externally back to the FPGA fabric.
------- overall: lots of embedded linux stuff, pretty nice is linux inside RJ45 jack (price 99EUR)
Philips: as second manufacturer has 3by3 mil 10 pin MLP packaged microcontroller (SiLabs was first long time ago)
Ti
PTH04070w: 3A SMPS module 11 by 14 mm, pretty nice for FPGA VCCINT
Antti