VHDL on CPLD vs. FPGA

[CaptDon]

Greetings all. I am a newbie at this. I have a development board with the Xilinx XC2C256. I program these boards using schematic capture and have had excellent luck. During a lab clean out the boss gave me a Xilinx Spartan-3 'starter board' with all the cool features, switches, displays, VGA, Keyboard etc. and a book called FPGA Prototyping by VHDL Examples specifically for the Spartan-3 starter board. My question is as I learn VHDL can it be applied directly to CPLD's?? In the end I want to break out of Schematic Capture picking and placing logic blocks and interconnecting them with schematic representations of wires and buses and go to writing lines of logic in VHDL and applying them to these CPLD boards which our company uses for several lab projects. We use the CPLD boards because they are 'instant on' with power up so to speak and most importantly they DO NOT become un-programmed with voltage transients like the FPGA boards did. We have up to 4500 electrical horsepower near to these boards with big switching spikes. Thanks for your guidance!! Cheers!!

 

[nctnico]

You can use VHDL with CPLD just fine. I have done several projects in the past. In the end it is all about getting optimised logic for the target device.

[SiliconWizard]

Yes, besides, these days, there is a lot of offering for small, low-cost FPGAs that can replace what was earlier done with "CPLDs", but with much better performance and more features. All this using VHDL.
Lattice has "instant-on" devices (MachXO2/XO3), Microsemi as well (now Microchip), using internal Flash. The MachXO3 can also come in OTP versions (actually, not one, but only just a few times programmable) in cheaper prices.

[BrianHG]

Even Altera's Max7000 series PLDs (EPM7032 and up) are still available and compile in Quartus 13.1 with their full tool suite and simulator, meaning AHDL, VHDL, and Verilog support.

Sizes range from 32mcell to 512mcell.