QuickLogic

Be sure that you have neither reprogrammability nor in-circuit programmability at all.

I did a PCI (actually PMC, but same thing, different form factor) design using the QL5064 device.

Pros:

• The tech support was excellent and their simulation models were great.

• The core-to-fabric interface was well-documented and easy to use.

• Behind a bridge, the chip did DMA transfers (64-bit/66MHz) at 500 MB/s. Hot damn. Specifics: we put two identical boards (each w/QL5064 and 1 GB SDRAM) onto a PMC carrier board, and told one to do DMA writes to the other.

• Instant on -- no waiting forever (or at least beyond the PCI reset time) for the device to configure.

• Only needs a single 3.3V power supply.

Cons:

• The fabric was supposed to work up to 100 MHz, but the interface between the fabric and the PCI core doesn't go that fast. Newer FPGAs from other vendors go a lot faster.

• I couldn't get the full-up Leonardo (and later, Mentor Precision) to work with the device. The QuickLogic tools come with a QL-specific version of Synplify so I used that. Perhaps the full-up version of Synplify would have given me better results. Dunno

• There's not much available in terms of interesting features: no clock DLL or PLL, no LVDS, etc, etc, etc.

• They're OTP and you can't program them in-circuit, so you've got to spring for their programmer or use the factory programming services (which works well except you don't get instant gratification).

• OTP means that you'll need an expensive socket on your prototype boards for development.

• The parts are not cheap, esp. considering the speed.

Good luck,

-a

Andy -- The QL5064 will go full tilt (533MB/s) if you are interested. There is a small matter about violating the PCI spec ...