[Coco] Coco ProtoType Board

[jdaggett at gate.net]

On 3 Sep 2006 at 3:43, Mark Marlette wrote:

> Upside, CPLDs are cheap and reasonable.
> 
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Upside in my opinion is higher density of logic. Cost may or may not be an issue 
depending on design and logic requ irements. 


> Downside, don't kid yourself. Xlinx is about a 1GB download while 
> Altera's is about 500MB. These programs are complex and could be 
> overwhelming for a first timer. Not impossible by any means. I almost live
> in them and all of my products have CPLDs on them, so the choice is
> simple. But to someone that is going to use the program, once a year or so
> will forget how it works from project to project.
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Despite the application size,  CPLD development can be done with no HDL 
language requirements. Both ISE and Quartus  have schematic entry. Both can 
compile and synthesize from a schematic. All then is needed is a good 
understanding of logic design. 

Even the most complex FPGA design literally can be done from schematic entry 
with little or no HDL language knowledge. The major drawback to this is your are 
then locked to a particular series of programable lodic and vendor. HDL language 
can be made far more portable from device to devce and vendor to vendor. 

james