[BrianBSL]

Originally Posted by Qbranch

Yeah but you've been working with them to make your vision system for a long time!

Have to say though... the power and the parallel processing capability of FPGA's is enticing... though i've herd the compilers for FPGA's as well as the hardware itself is extremely expensive, little out of the range of most of us unless its for a 'real' project not a fun project.

Anyhow, the possibilities are interesting...

-q

Most FPGA companies have a soft-core microprocessor solution for it. Xilinx has the MicroBlaze, with hard-core PowerPC's on some of their FPGA's. Some pre-synthesized "master code" could be provided as the hardware description for part of the design (including the motor IO), and then teams could optionally add digital logic as necessary, or use the pre-provided logic. Then, they could program flash directly that would hold the microprocessor code. Pretty much, this allows them to ignore the digital logic part and just use the microprocessor if they would like, or have the ability to add digital logic to the FPGA itself. Cost is an issue, however. For example Xilinx's EDK sells for $1000 or so - although if you only needed their SDK (just a port of eclipse) and gcc, it may be significantly less.