Hallo. Am 28.03.2008 um 06:51 schrieb Jesse Gordon:
> Can you please tell me a little more about meta-FPGA? I have no idea > what it means, but I was talking with someone (who knows slightly more > about fpgas then I, which still isn't much) a while back the general > idea of constructing an fpga inside an fpga, such that once a > high-gate-count fpga were programmed, it would function as a much > smaller fpga who's internal workings would be well documented and open > source, allowing hobbyists to experiment with completely free tools, > and > perhaps some day a real fpga company would build a native one. > Well, the main reason for Meta-FPGA is the hidden bitstream formats for nearly all vendors and the commercial vendor tools in the chain. The idea point out, that it would be possible to develop out a fpga structure, which is free in all meanings. Free tools would offer a tool chain to synthesis, place and route on this free fpga structure. The commercial vendor tools still once a time in need, when the free fpga structure is synthesised, placed and routed on the commercial fpga families. Nice idea i think but until now not realized.. I would think, the main reasons are: * you need nearly 10 to 100 more gate-array to build one gate on the fpga. This means, the Meta-FPGA structure contains 1/10 to 1/100 less gate ressources then the buyed one. * practically all realizations of fpga structure, routing ressources, look-up tables etc are well patented. In fact, this prevent us to develop a free fpga structure with out violating one of this patents. Otherwise we would find a ground- breaking new structure for the fpga. I think the patent issue is a bigger show stopper. Here we are stepping in the field of real hardware, there are a lot of more patents than software developer may thinking off. I did a lot investigation in the fpga topic - and still dream of a free one! Regards, Hagen Sankowski _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
