Hello, How feasible is it to shut down (or place in low power mode) an fpga (eg. XC3S1000 from Xilinx or similar) and power it up when it is needed (eg. after some interrupt to a microcontroller) ? If so, what hardware is used to provide it with power and still be controlled by a microcontroller ?
you can do this with xilinx parts by shutting down supplies, but you need time afer wakeup for the FPGA to recongure itself, if that is not acceptable then you would need to use actel IGLOO
Antti
Check the Spartan-3 Generation FPGA User Guide
In Section III the "Powering Spartan-3 Generation FPGAs" subsection has an entry for "Saving Power" which will give you all the details on what you can do and what the impacts are on the power-savings mode you select.
Xilinx also now has a nonvolatile version of spartan-3. -Clark
The Spartan-3AN is not instant-on, however. The Spartan-3 Family User Guide mentions what can be done with the 3AN as well as other devices to save power or work from shutdown.
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