[Oberon] Re (2): Hardware; was: Development boards

[peter at easthope.ca]

From:	"Skulski, Wojciech" <skulski at pas.rochester.edu>
Date:	Mon, 4 May 2020 05:13:46 +0000
> The essence of the FPGA is that it can be customized for many 
> different uses. As soon as the silicon vendors figure out how to make 
> the FPGA even more flexible, they will immediately change the design. 
> The FPGAs are constantly mutating in different directions.

The 555 had some evolution also.  Described briefly in the cited 
article. Simplification: 9 pins to 8.  Expansion: one 555 to two on 
one chip.  Over a period of decades there was a convergence to a 
fairly stable result.  I'm willing to hypothesize a convergence for 
the FPGA.  Greater complexity producing a longer convergence time.  A 
range of capacities rather than only two.  I might be absolutely wrong 
but technologies do tend to converge.

> However, note that the *tools* to use the FPGAs have been 
> standardized. ... You can take the original set of Verilog files 
> developed for Spartan-3, and kind of easily (kind of...) retarget them 
> to another FPGA.

Good.  Thanks,                         ... Lyall
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