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Which company is your preferred FPGA /PLD supplier ?

S

Syner

Jan 1, 1970
0
Presently,the major players in the PLD market are
XILINX,ALTERA,CYPRESS,LATTICE,ATMEL,QUICKLOGIC.However,
ALTERA and XILINX became bigger and bigger.The gap between
these two with the others become more and more important.

Which one is your first choice?
 
A

Andrew Paule

Jan 1, 1970
0
Actel anyone -

I don't think that this is a "voting" type question - I use whatever
device will sit the design the best - anyone (in my humble opinion) who
has a "favorite" has not been around the block enough times. Gimme a
quicklogic pci bridge (only 2k flops though - 8b/10b framer anyone?), a
big xilinx part to shove a processor in, an Altera part for a memory
controller and some other things, - oh yeah, I've got a mindspeed part
on my board too, ouch, can you say IBM ASIC, and I need someting that
can IO like an Actel SXA part, and I like the little lattice stuff for
some quick things, and an Atmel part for the higher voltage stuff.
wadda want.

Andrew
 
J

John Larkin

Jan 1, 1970
0
Presently,the major players in the PLD market are
XILINX,ALTERA,CYPRESS,LATTICE,ATMEL,QUICKLOGIC.However,
ALTERA and XILINX became bigger and bigger.The gap between
these two with the others become more and more important.

Which one is your first choice?

We've used Actel, Lattice, and Xilinx, and all we use now is Xilinx;
we're very happy with them. Actel was buggy and a general pain,
Lattice was too limited in architecture. Haven't tried Altera.

John
 
K

Ken Smith

Jan 1, 1970
0
Presently,the major players in the PLD market are
XILINX,ALTERA,CYPRESS,LATTICE,ATMEL,QUICKLOGIC.However,
ALTERA and XILINX became bigger and bigger.The gap between
these two with the others become more and more important.

Which one is your first choice?

Cypress is dropping out of the CPLD market.

Lattice and Atmel don't provide development software that they take
responcibility for.

Xilinx's "web pak" is dreadful to use.

I've never (that I can remember) heard of PLDs from QuickLogic.

That leaves Altera winning.
 
K

Keith R. Williams

Jan 1, 1970
0
Altera has a clever way to create D-type Latch with NANDs so
it is best arranged , Also POF file format is protected and cannot
be reverse engineered.

That has always been at the absolute *bottom* of my priorities.
I try to make what I've done obvious. If you really need to hide
things Xilinx allow an encrypted data stream.

Xilinx has a ton of optimizations that may not be supported by
the common tools, but are there for the engineer (the carry
chains are quite useful, though not obvious for "random" logic).
but Altera software Max Plus is not free.

Ok. You want quality software, it's not going to be free.
in fact any PLD/FPGA depends on the design!

Not really. Many designs could easily be done in either. In
that case it's all about how you play the vendors against each
other. For some designs one might be better than the other. In
these cases, I'd guess Xilinx would take 80%. Their I/O is
simply superb (they bought an FPGA company out from under a
design of mine just for its I/O - very ugly; a complete redesign
at the last minute).
 
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