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Making the MOST
Xilinx Targets Telematics Bus
In the good old days, people knew what a LUT was.
Why, when I was a design engineer, we taped out our design on glass – with real tape. There was none of this fancy new lithography. After FPGAs came out, we used to work out
the LUT truth tables by hand, coding up Karnaugh maps to minimize our equations, doing De Morgan equivalents… Heck, kids these days with all their fancy IP blocks and algorithm compilers
– they couldn't cross-couple a NAND gate if their life depended on it. Spoiled, I tell ya'!
Back in the day, FPGA designers were a determined bunch. They had to be. They needed the special advantages of FPGA technology so badly that they would practically walk across
hot coals to get the darn things to work. Today, however, designers have two things that those engineers did not – schedule pressure, and options. With market windows closing almost before
they've opened, you've got to get your design out into the world fast enough to avoid getting a finger chopped off. You don't have time to make a career learning the vagaries of one device or one
technology. For any given electronic design problem, there are several compelling solutions competing for your socket, and you've got to pick one, use it, and move along without having to marry the
technology. [more]
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