Chapter 8 – Choosing the Right Device

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the general approach for choosing an FPGA device. Choosing an FPGA can be a complex process because there are so many product families from the different vendors. Product lines and families from the same vendor overlap; product lines and families from different vendors both overlap and, at the same time, sport different features and capabilities; and things are constantly changing, seemingly on a daily basis. It's worth noting that size isn't everything in the FPGA design world. One really needs to base FPGA selection on the design needs, such as number of I/O pins, available logic resources, availability of special functional blocks, and so forth. Becoming familiar with the architectures, resources, and capabilities associated with the various product families from the different FPGA vendors demands a considerable amount of time and effort. In the real world, time-to-market pressures are so intense that design engineers typically have sufficient time to make only high-level evaluations before settling on a particular vendor, family, and device. Given a choice, it would be wonderful to have access to some sort of FPGA selection wizard application (preferably Web based). This allows one to choose a particular vendor, a selection of vendors, or make the search open to all vendors. It would be nice if the wizard prompts to any IP requirements. Finally, clicking the “Go” button would generate a report detailing the leading contenders and their capabilities.