Will system-level design drive the FPGA gold rush? Nick Martin examines how programmable logic and the tools used with it are changing system design

摘要

In the 1970s, 8bit microprocessors became a commodity technology and electronics design changed very rapidly in response. The ability to partition part the design into a 'soft' medium - programming the processor - had a profound effect on the industry. Now, any part of the design that could be moved into software could be changed, even after the product was manufactured. The microprocessor represented a condensation of all that had been learned about programmable computers from the pioneering efforts dating from the 1940's. Although the ability to include software in almost every electronic design appeared quite suddenly toward the end of the 1970's, this was really a continual process that had simply passed an invisible threshold at which these programmable devices became inexpensive enough to be designed into myriad applications.