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Summer of FPGAs -- Poll: What Else Would You Like to Know About Memory Storage?

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Tech Spotlight Summer of FPGAs:

Main Agenda | Delkin Devices | Tech Connection | FPGA Group | Related Tech Spotlight | Participate in the Discussion

 

This poll concerns a recent tech spotlight called: Tips for Selecting Memory Storage in FPGA Applications

 

A Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is a programmable integrated circuit that works similarly to any digital circuit serving thousands of gates. An FPGA is made of logic blocks armed with a user-programmable switch matrix, and this arrangement allows it to accommodate design changes.  Unlike its predecessors, programmable read-only memories (PROMs) and programmable logic devices (PLDs), an FPGA uses a re-programmable and efficient medium like Flash memory or static RAM (SRAM) to store its configuration information. Flash and SRAM are often added to boost the performance of FPGA-fitted embedded systems, utilizing this memory for a variety of tasks, such as storing software code or caches and databases that ultimately aid in hardware acceleration.

 

Poll Question: What Else Would You Like to Know About Memory Storage?

  • This is an odd poll - very hard to know what else I would like to know because, well, I don't know it !

     

    Trying to enter the spirit of things, when using FPGAs there is often less RAM on chip than you would like so you use external RAM,

     

    Static RAM is easy to use but pricey.

    DDRAM is really hard to use - controllers are v. complicated and fussy about pins and very hard to understand. Really mega hard to write your own.

    DDRAM is also very fussy about PCB layout, needing track propagaton time matching in most applications.

     

    SDRAM is much more forgiving but slower and more expensive per byte. Often this doesn't matter. You can use tricks on SDRAM  (like full page burst reads/writes) that

    improve performance. You could do this with DDRAM as well but it means writing your own controller - which is hard. And if 32 or 64 Mbytes is enough for you that's one chip

    and still cheap.

     

    So all this gets us to the memory question, is it safe to assume that SDRAM will still be available 10 years from now ?

     

    (Farnell don't list any SDRAM above 128Mbit, other people do. )

     

    MK