Hi,
I have taken a look at these babies,
http://www.latticesemi.com/en/Products/FPGAandCPLD/ECP5The good point about them that attracted my eyes are lower prices, and 0.5mm pitch BGA packages, I have these questions before I get my hands dirty on these babies.
First of all is there a free license for using the software for them, especially the ones with SERDES ? I have read briefly their documents and saw that they managed to route all the balls on a 4 layer PCB for the 285 csfBGA package! using only 0.1mm Vias!?
So are those Vias laser drilled Via? what sort of prices should I expect for the PCB tooling and manufacturing costs?
Also I have seen they have used a FT2232H device for JTAG, is it open source or should I buy a separate programmer?
can I connect a DDR3 16bit wide memory on a 4 layer PCB to these chips?
what is the learning curve of using lattice diamond? is it huge? since I have experience in ISE and vivado.
what about the IP's availability? are they free? what about the SERDES IP's, for example PCI express, Ethernet or HDMI?
And finally does this family worth doing projects?