[Coco] Re: CoCo video? (CoCo4)

[KnudsenMJ at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/4/06 7:19:47 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
jdaggett at gate.net writes:

>Xilinx Webpack 8.1 is 778 MBs uncompressed. Another 1.4 MBs for  
>the update file and the IP update is another 207 MBs compressed.  

That pretty well rules out downloading -- better ask someone to snail mail  a 
CDROM.  Hmm, maybe a DVD=ROM.


>Yes writing code for CPDL/FPGA is now easier than ever. In most  
>applications in industry you almost don't need to know anything  
>about hardware. Verilog is so much like C that a software engineer  
>can cut and paste black box libraries and wire them up and they  
>have an IC. NO real knowledge of how the internals  work.

At Bell Labs in 1998 we had guys who had been good ASIC designers, serious  
hardware engineers, who were now doing ASIC design completely in VHDL.   Every 
day they acted more like software programmers, and got treated like them  by 
management too.
 
VHDL, BTW, is probably the worst programming language that's less than 15  
years old.  It combines the worst features of ADA and ALGOL, plus some  semantic 
tricks of its own, like global variables that don't change value  everywhere 
when you assign a new value to them.
 
I was glad to keep on doing circuit board design (with their chips) and  
writing genuine software for lab testing.
 
Oh yes, we had a couple of Xilinx parts and programmers to work on  them.  
SOmeone was right -- when you finally integrate all the subsystems  on the final 
chip, all kinds of extra gates and speed losses show up due to  overhead.  So 
do budget for that.
--Mike K.