Un bel giorno Chris digitò:

> What do people in this forum see is the future of FPGA 4 to 5 years down
> the line?
>
> FPGA, generic processor, or ASIC?

My preference would be for FPGA with more specialized functions, and a
(really) user-friendly software development environment: pseudo visual
programming, no need for external toolchains for embedded CPUs development,
integrated debugging instead of crappy simulators, and so on. FPGA are
cool, there are a lot of special applications where they are already (and
always will be) the best choice; but for the real breakthrough, IMHO they
have to win the match with generic 16- and 32-bit microcontrollers/DSP for
small and medium-volume applications.

> Currently, on average, a consumer (who may own cellphone, camera,
> camcorder, ipod, etc.) owns zero FPGAs. Do you see this ratio of number
> of FPGAs/consumer changing?

I really don't know much about ASIC, but as far as I can see, I don't think
that FPGA would ever be the right choice for this type of volume
applications. If I plan to sell one million of units, I don't care much if
I have to spend one million dollars for ASIC setup, if then one chip will
cost one dollar (ASIC) instead of ten (FPGA).

> There are two main advantages, as I see, of FPGAs over ASICs or
> processors - ability to implement designs faster (shorter time to
> market) and ability to perform easy "firmware updates".

Generic processors are as fast developing and upgradable than FPGA (if not
more), and I used to think that the development steps for ASIC and FPGA
until the "real" manufacturing were very similar. Am I wrong?

And by the way, I don't think that if you order one million FPGA, either
Xilinx or Altera will ship them overnight.

--
asd