>>     Working on a VHDL synthesizable model for the PIC (haven't pinned down
>>     any particular one yet..), partly for fun, perhaps for a future FPGA..
>>     (BTW, is there demand for such a beast?  Let me know!).
>
>I havn't worked with FPGA enough to know, so maybe you could tell me how
>much would it cost for a chip that could synthesize a 16CXX for ICE? I think
>many of us would be interested. I am afraid that it would end up costing as
>much as a commercial emulator, (small quantities), after spending months
>designing & debugging.
Hadn't thought about any ICE applications... hmm.. interesting..

Potential uses of a PIC core:
   1) Use it inside a larger VHDL simulation of a PIC (s) and any other
      modeled devices.  In this case, you wouldn't be interested in
      synthesizing the PIC; just modeling it to see how it plays with
      others.  This is simply for systems-level simulation.

   2) Use it with an FPGA, perhaps with the PIC's program in an external
      EPROM.  XILINX, similarly, offers their own little "sequencer"
      machine for this purpose.  PIC is just such a nice little architecture
      with existing free software support.
      The XILINX (or whatever) would include whatever additional
      custom logic you need.  Updates to such an FPGA design would be a more
      simple PIC program versus more intensive FPGA redesign.

   3) Use it as an actual core in a real ASIC design.  Other cores like ARM,
      OAK, etc. are pretty expensive.

   4) Perhaps, an existing multi-PIC design could be collected together into
      one ASIC with multiple VHDL PIC models in the design.

Just ideas.  Back to my model....

Tom Coonan
Thomas.Coonan@Sciatl.com