Does anyone else think that FPGA is like one of the biggest dogs to work with in the electronics world?
Massively complicated, closed software (and jesus I thought C compilers were bad), hard to use, expensive, difficult to solder, windows can probably destroy your design, etc.
I think I would rather work with any other component then a FPGA if I could avoid it.
HUH? Have you ever done an FPGA or CPLD design? What's the alternative? A whole board stuffed with 74xx chips? Revisions with wire-wrap wires?
I will admit there's a learning curve to anybody's tools and the HDL language you choose. But, I have to say I am now kicking myself for being so slow to adopt the technology.
Have you used a logic simulator to check that a VHDL file does what you want it to do before even looking at real hardware?
I actually PREFER an FPGA to a micro. With the simulator, and the methodology of HDL design, you can be much better assured of predictable FPGA functionality, with no really crazy side effects of one process/subroutine interfering with some other one due to mixed up variables or whatever.
I have several dozen CPLD and FPGA designs I'm currently manufacturing/supporting.
As for soldering, there are MANY smaller FPGAs that are in reasonable quad packs, starting at about 100 pins. There are some CPLDs in 44 pin packages.
As for Windows, well i do all my CPLD/FPGA work in Linux. Yes, there are some slight installation quirks, but I still use some very old Xilinx ise design packages, so I can support some older FPGA families that are the cheapest. $10 each without internal config PROM, or $13 with internal FLASH PROM.
Jon