[Oberon] Hardware; was: Development boards

[peter at easthope.ca]

>From peter at easthope.ca  Sat May  2 04:05:45 2020
> Is FPGA essential?

>From skulski at pas.rochester.edu  Sat May  2 04:53:45 2020
> It depends for what.

Should have made the question more specific.  Is FPGA essential for 
every control system and embedded system?  

Can't a laptop or ITX work for many student projects and for 
prototyping commercial systems?

In an industrial setting, power consumption and space aren't critical.  
A laptop or ITX might work there also.

>From joerg.straube at iaeth.ch  Sat May  2 14:53:39 2020
> In telecommunications, very roughly there are three types of boards 
> you can plug in a modular telecom gear:
> - CPU boards, ...
> - FPGA boards, ...
> - ASIC boards ...
> ...
> After the standard is mature ... a highly specialized ASIC for mass production.

Thanks for that explanation.

Any chance of a FPGA being standardized ever?  I don't know whether 
the ISO has produced a specification for an integrated circuit.  
Hypothetically possible.  

>From chris at cfbsoftware.com  Sat May  2 01:57:27 2020
> It is prudent to be concerned that hardware is going to survive for 
> a reasonable amount of time. So much appears suddenly and disappears 
> just as quickly that it is difficult to keep track. 

The 555 timer was designed in 1971 and is now standardized in a sense.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_timer_IC 
Many old chips have a similar history.  Is standardization 
fundamentally impossible for FPGA?   Just a question of maturity?

Regards,                          ... Lyall E.










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