Brian Padalino wrote:
Right now I like Altera's devices and prices a little better. They are 65nm and pack the most amount of logic and dedicated multipliers in the smallest packages. The largest Cyclone 3 device has 288 embedded 18x18 multipliers. Even the EP3C25 has 66 multipliers and a slew of logic for not that much money.
I did a quick comparison of Cyclone 3 and Spartan 3E and the results bear this out. Comparing equivalent resources (LUTs, registers, multipliers, RAM & I/O), the Cyclone 3 parts come in at about 1/2 the cost of Spartan 3E. Xilinx does have two grades of Spartan 3E parts smaller than the smallest Cyclone 3, but they're only marginally cheaper than the least expensive Cyclone 3.
Upsides for Xilinx - Xilinx free design tools will run on Linux (Altera Quartus only supports Linux with their subscription tools), and Spartan 3E parts require only 3 supply voltages whereas Cyclone 3 parts need 4 (but two of those are the same voltage - you could probably get by with passive filtering). Xilinx development systems such as the previously mentioned Starter Kit, or the Avnet Spartan 3A eval board ($39) are somewhat cheaper than those available for Cyclone parts.
Thanks for the heads up. Eric
