I would say that for a portable device the MOST important feature, by far, is the power consumption, and even the latest low power devices have comparatively (to ASICs) high power requirements.

That said, I sincerely think that adding an FPGA to the NanoNote is not a good idea. IIRC, the idea is to allow the NN to be used as as the "brains" of electronics projects. In that case, the FPGA offers the BEST flexibility if you forget about the power consumption issues, but to make use of that flexibility you must place a connector with a lot of pins. And that is a lot of PCB real state, not to mention the design challenge of integrating the high-pin-count connector in the enclosure.

If I was to use the NN as the controller of a project, I would just use an external microcontroller with integrated USB device port. In this case it would be certainly convenient to have +5V/100mA available in the NN port.

2009/9/10 Carlos Camargo <cicamargoba@gmail.com>
Hi

As you know, we are planning add a FPGA to the new Nano. I want to start a discussion about what is the best family for nano, what I care about is:

Power consumption
Size
Free tools for programming / configuration
Price
Available logic, RAM, multipliers, etc


At present I'm using Xilinx Spartan 3E FPGAs, but I don't have enough experience with Altera, or Lattice, Can you please talk us about your experiences with Lattice and Altera FPGAs?


Best Regards


Carlos







--
Carlos Iván Camargo Bareño
Profesor Asistente
Departamento de Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica
Universidad Nacional de Colombia
cicamargoba@unal.edu.co

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