Yea.. OK. The STM32F429 is too expensive, so you're question is about hardcoding an ARM core an FPGA.
No, not harcoding. A hardcore. And, yes, it's possible to do at a reasonable price-point. Just look at the Cypress PSoCs.
I don't understand why you are not seriously considering different families/architectures then.. aside the fact that you'd have to change your username then
Haha, yea, my username would be an issue.
Not a big one though.
I've shipped >10M devices based on various STM32s, so I have invested a massive amount of time learning the ins and outs of them. I could make a lateral move into he NXP family (for example), but for some reason, I _think_ (I've got no facts backing this up) I'll just swap one set of idiosyncrasies for another.
but what does the STM32F4 have that you can't find in others so it's so difficult to switch?
I wonder if it's the 2xCAN + USB combo, i recently went for a PIC32MK for this very reason, it was the cheapest (available in a small QFN package)
but of course, i don't think this is the case.
What I needed from this particular STM32F4 was:
* HS USB
* 2MB of RAM (I.e, external SDRAM)
* 2 x UART
* 4 x PWM @ >10KHz
* 8 free regular GPIOs
For me, this would be mid-end. No display, and no ethernet or WiFi.
Yes, I don't get the point of this thread. It looks like the amount of manual work is going to increase many times with FPGA path (even if such thing existed and was practical).
No, there would still be regular peripherals on-die. Just like the PSoC. The FPGA fabric should be in addition to what you'd expect from a regular MCU, not instead of.