FPGA Journal Update

a techfocus media publication :: July 24, 2007 :: volume XVI, no. 04

FROM THE EDITOR

This week, FPGA Journal looks at the venerable LUT, and all the pretenders to its throne. Now that we can make a programmable array of just about anything, what thing works best? Our latest feature looks under history’s hood for current answers.

Thanks for reading! If there's anything we can do to make our publications more useful to you, please let us know at:
comments@fpgajournal.com. If you'd rather sound off in public, please post your comments or questions in our new Journal Forums.

Kevin Morris – Editor
FPGA and Structured ASIC Journal

LATEST NEWS

July 24, 2007

Lattice Semiconductor Expands Support For Its Open Source LatticeMico32 Embedded Microprocessor

Nuvation Joins MathStar's Certified Design Center Program

NASA Uses NI LabVIEW FPGA to Test Advanced Space Telescope

Altera Delivers First FPGA-Based IP Support for Key Industrial Ethernet Protocols

July 23, 2007

Xilinx Adds Greater Power Efficiency to High Performance Spartan-3A DSP Platform FPGAs

July 19, 2007

Wind River Provides On-Chip Debugging Solution to Address Growing Complexities of Device Manufacturing and Test Environments

RTC Group Announces Final Schedule for Portable Design Conference

CURRENT FEATURE ARTICLES

FP?A
The Quest for the Best Building Blocks
NOS FPGA
Vintage Silicon Revisited
COTS Supercomputing
DRC Harnesses FPGAs
FPGAs and Ethernet
Providing Programmability to Pervasive Interconnect Standard, by Navneet Rao, Xilinx, Inc.
Duct Tape, WD-40, FPGAs
The Universal Survival Kit
Space FPGAs Get a Boost
Actel Announces Improvements
Altium’s Alternative
Turning System Design Inside Out
First, Make a Roux
Beyond Basic FPGA Configuration

JOURNAL WEBCASTS

Leverage the best performance and debug features with the latest release of ModelSim (Mentor Graphics)

LatticeXP2 FPGAs: SRAM + Embedded Flash = No Compromise, Full-Featured Non-Volatile FPGA Design Solutions (Lattice)

Learn to Design with Stratix III FPGAs’ Programmable Power Technology & Selectable Core Voltage (Altera)

Using Processors on FPGAs? The industry's only soft IP ARM7 core for Flash FPGAs (Actel)

Low Power FPGA design with Actel IGLOO, the 5µW FPGA for cool portables (Actel)

ARM7, Analog, Flash and FPGA in a Single Chip Actel's ARM in Fusion (Actel)

Introducing Actel Fusion – the world’s first Flash-based FPGA, with Memory and Analog front end (Actel)

FP?A
The Quest for the Best Building Blocks

In olden times, when digital dinosaurs roamed the vast plains of our circuit boards – when 22V10’s walked the earth in vast herds, programmable logic devices were essentially nothing more than routing. By creating an array of programmable interconnect, you could essentially hard-wire any complex combinational logic function. PLDs quickly evolved into FPGAs, however, as it became clear that more structural variation was required than and and/or matrix, and sequential behavior was highly desired from programmable logic.

FPGA, as we all know, stands for “Field Programmable Gate Array.” However, the elements arrayed in a typical FPGA are not “Gates” at all. Most FPGAs use some variant of a look-up table (LUT) as their basic building block. A LUT is a simple PROM (much like a tiny version of early PLDs) that maps every combination of input values to an output value based on a truth table. By loading various data into the truth table, a LUT can be made to emulate any combinational logic gate. Most FPGA LUT-cells also contain a register or flip-flop to store or latch the output value, and often some additional logic for structures like carry chains. [more]

EVENTS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

FLASH MEMORY SUMMIT - AUGUST 7-9, 2007
MARRIOTT HOTEL, SANTA CLARA, CA
The 2nd Annual Flash Memory Summit is the only conference dedicated to flash memory and its applications. It is intended for system designers, analysts, hardware and software engineers, product marketing and marketing communications specialists, and engineering and marketing managers. It features half-day tutorials, workshops, paper and panel sessions, keynotes, roundtables, special sessions, expert breakout sessions, and exhibits. Subjects include hardware, software, design methods, consumer applications, embedded applications, computer and mobile applications, alternative technologies, controllers, programming methods, security, standards, digital rights management, and market research.

More information

Strengthen your skills and speed your time to market
at the ARM Developers’ Conference!
100 track sessions on embedded applications from hardware and software partners and ARM Licensees. Design centers and exhibitions on the show floor, forums and special analyst presentations, and the largest exhibition of ARM technologies in the world:
October 2-4, 2007, Santa Clara Convention Center
More Information

Unleash the full potential of IP in your FPGA design!
Learn how to fully leverage the power of the IP-XACT™
specification to accelerate FPGA designs. Join ARM &
Mentor Graphics as they present a tool flow that accelerates design processes for ARM Cortex-M1 designs using sophisticated HW & SW IP. Free online seminar.
More information

Free Job Postings on Journaljobs.com
JournalJobs.com – the job board for FPGA Journal and Embedded Technology Journal is now re-launching with a host of new features and capabilities. In celebration of JournalJobs.com grand re-opening, we’re offering free job postings through July 31, 2007. Go online, post a job, pay nothing, and watch for those qualified resumes to come knocking on your inbox.
Click here to post your job listing on Journal Jobs!

Free Seminar - Winning Webcasts
Does your company do webcasts? Want to make them better? Embedded Technology Journal's Amelia Dalton will show you how in this free online seminar "Winning Webcasts".

Click here to register!

You're receiving this newsletter because you subscribed at our web site www.fpgajournal.com.
If someone forwarded this newsletter to you and you'd like to receive your own free subscription, go to: www.fpgajournal.com/update.
If at any time, you would like to unsubscribe, click here. (But we hope you don't.)
If you have any questions or comments, send them to comments@fpgajournal.com.