FPGA vs Microprocessor: newbie question

NOT

Howdy José,

This sounds a little too much like homework, so I'm not going to completely answer your questions. I will give you a real-world example, and hopefully *you* can explain why the FPGA is more suitable:

Suppose you need to design a simple card whose sole purpose is to block Ethernet packets that begin with the byte 0xFF. Assume packets are 1500 bytes long and arriving at a full gigabit Ethernet rate (nearly 1000 Mbit per second when using large packets).

Why would an FPGA be more suitable? Items of interest: data bus speed (vs. data bus width) and the number of processor instructions and bus cycles required to get a packet DMA'ed into memory, inspect the first byte, and then DMA'ed back out of memory.

Have fun,

Marc

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The major advantages of using FPGA - You can have all your modules do = processing in parallel. Such as digital filters. Microprocessor simply = cannot do it.=20

Thank you very much for your answer=20

Jos=E9 da Rocha

sor=20

=20

hy?

There are functionalities that are better done in software and there are others that are better done in hardware.

Point of interest may be the feasibility, power consumption, required=20 clock speed, ..

Though not generally true, the more trivial the functionality, the simpler it is to be made in an FPGA. The more complex the=20 functionality, the better it is done with software. As sidenote, there are microcontrollers available to be put into an FPGA.

Rene

--=20 Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar -

A good reference :

-----Original Message----- From: Rene Tschaggelar [mailto: snipped-for-privacy@none.net]=20 Posted At: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 4:16 AM Posted To: fpga Conversation: FPGA vs Microprocessor: newbie question Subject: Re: FPGA vs Microprocessor: newbie question

Jos=E9 da Rocha wrote:

why?

There are functionalities that are better done in software and there are = others that are better done in hardware.

Point of interest may be the feasibility, power consumption, required = clock speed, ..

Though not generally true, the more trivial the functionality, the = simpler it is to be made in an FPGA. The more complex the functionality, = the better it is done with software. As sidenote, there are microcontrollers available to be put into an = FPGA.

Rene

-- Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar -

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