[Oberon] hardware cost

[Walter Gallegos]

Some weeks ago I post

"Never a FPGA microcontroller could be cheaper as an ASIC 
microcontroller...". I coming saying this in the last 20 years and I 
don't see changes in the short time.

So, what justify the FPGA cost in a project ?

Well, with an FPGA you can go to more, my all terrain truck...

An example for who don't know what a FPGA can do. One of our projects 
acquire pixels from a sensor then equalize pixel by pixel and replace 
dead pixels to mount the image on the fly. To achieve high speed image 
ratio the project need processing video in hardware. Our DVB-C/S or 
ISDB-Tb modulators and others run into the same project lane, custom 
hardware with software; no one microcontroller in the market could 
achieve our signal processing requirements.

So, FPGA and ASIC are two different worlds. To addressing this issue 
FPGA providers add CPUs in form of ASIC inside their FPGAs.

Again, if build your own hardware is a vantage have Oberon running in 
FPGA is great solution; on the other hand, if the hardware features in a 
microcontroller fulfil your requirements then use it, even the mythical 
man-month rate is cheaper.

-- 

Walter Daniel Gallegos
Programmable Logic & Software
Consultoría, Diseño, Entrenamiento.
Montevideo, Uruguay
EMAIL walter at waltergallegos.com
Tel +598 26 23 44 60 | Cel +598 99 18 58 88