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Forum The future of "FPGA only" chips compared to SoC and its impact on FPGA engineers
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  • Replies 13 replies
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  • skills
  • 7 Ways to Leave Your Spartan-6
  • xilinx
  • fpga
Related

The future of "FPGA only" chips compared to SoC and its impact on FPGA engineers

manihatn
manihatn over 3 years ago

Hi All,

We all have noticed the evolution of FPGA from "FPGA-only" chips (from Spartan) to the current generation of Zynq based SoC's and MPSoC's.

The premise for the "7 ways to to Leave your Spartan-6" prompting designs to be migrated from Spartan-6 to Spartan-7 from my understanding was the chip shortage due to pandemic. 

As part of future-proofing product lines to handle feature creeps and having supply-chain reliability, I have always tempted to migrate designs from Spartan to Zynq's.  

I have always wondered, besides the Power consumption (and to certain extent price point) argument, what are people's reason to stick with FPGA-only chips instead of SoC's.

Are there inherent advantages of using FPGA-Only chips instead of SoC's

As  FPGA engineers, there is a growing need to understand the basics of embedded Linux (and some low level software) as the field is gradually moving towards more software defined workfiows targeting  embedded SoCs.

Will be great to hear your thoughts, opinions and personal journey on how you have evolved your skills over the past few years

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Top Replies

  • michaelkellett
    michaelkellett over 3 years ago +6
    Where to start ? A small (by volume) sector of the FPGA market may well move to using Zynq like FPGAs. But never all of it. Most applications don't need or want Linux or any other big operating system…
  • shabaz
    shabaz over 3 years ago +3
    Hi, Regarding " growing need to understand the basics of embedded Linux (and some low level software) " this is a completely different skill-set to FPGA development, and in fact a completely different…
  • Metaforest
    Metaforest over 3 years ago in reply to shabaz +3
    FPGA designers can choose to ignore the software/firmware side of the project for the most part. The only point of coordination is the specification of the hardware register addresses that the CPU(s) will…
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  • Metaforest
    Metaforest over 3 years ago

    The main issue wasn't the new silicon in the 7-series by itself. 

    It was the need to get developers onto Vivado.

    The old tool set was becoming unmaintainable, and was not going to be able to support Zynq or other SOC+FPGA designs.

    Nor could it support more advanced development with functional C-HDL, or better library management.

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  • Metaforest
    Metaforest over 3 years ago

    The main issue wasn't the new silicon in the 7-series by itself. 

    It was the need to get developers onto Vivado.

    The old tool set was becoming unmaintainable, and was not going to be able to support Zynq or other SOC+FPGA designs.

    Nor could it support more advanced development with functional C-HDL, or better library management.

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