Funny, just the other day at work I was trying to explain to someone what an FPGA was and I used the 7400 TLL example and said imagine if you had a crate full of TTL chips and you could put them all onto a single die, arrange them with the most common ones in little module called LUT's and then be able to cross connect any input to any output using a memory type array. The guy I was explaining it to was familiar with TTL from school and immediately the light went on.
Is there a good idiots guide to understanding FPGAs and how to develop for them? I have a CS background (so I've read both Hennessy & Paterson books) but don't know FPGAs nor have an EE background.<p>Reading about FPGAs always confuses me, from the perspective of someone who thinks as a normal SW developer. Like where does the FPGA begin execution, etc...<p>TIA
One thing I've wondered is to what extent does discrete logic "scale proportionally" to integrated logic.<p>I mean if you make a big machine out of these things, are the trade-offs you make regarding e.g. signal fanout and propagation delay similar to those made in an IC that did the same computation?
This is really cool, but I'm surprised they didn't try to make a CPLD. You would at least have a shot at matching an IC for amount of logic gates.