ICE40 Logic Cells

Dec 05, 2014 2 Replies

I was aware that the ICE40 devices have some limitations compared to other devices that are not so cost and power constrained. Until now the apparent lack of LUT RAM escaped me. I guess it is one of those features that is so ingrained in my mind that I never noticed they don't talk about it. The LP family has a very low end member with only 384 LUTs and *no* block RAM, so I was considering what I might do with the LUT RAM. Not much. They don't mention the LUT RAM anywhere and barely mention the LUTs as ROM only peripherally, but I'm pretty sure that is available since it is the same as logic.



Wow, the 384 LUT part has no RAM at all, so it ends up being incredibly limited.


Rick

At that point it's basically just a CPLD killer.

Rob Gaddi, Highland Technology -- www.highlandtechnology.com Email address domain is currently out of order. See above to fix.

Yes, you are exactly right. Lowest possible price.

They have an ICE40LM line that only uses configuration RAM with no internal configuration storage. Funny how you can read the data sheet looking for the raison d'etre of a part but can't see it because of the marketing crap. I've seen this sub family for a while now and always thought it was about the hard cores (I2C, SPI, etc). It is about the lowest possible cost meaning no config storage. I guess the assumption is the configuration is stored elsewhere for pennies.

Rick

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