On Sunday, Nov 16, 2003, at 21:28 US/Pacific, Denny Esterline wrote:

>> XC9572XL

The thing I find depressing about CPLDs (and PLDs, for that matter) is
the
power consumption figure.  I've gotten too spoiled my pic, AVRs,
msp430s,
and other low power microcontrollers, and I just get sticker shock when
I get to that line of the data sheet for a CPLD.

(it's like - there is (or was) a "gameboy" software development web
ring,
where people would build their own rom/flash based cartridges with extra
peripherals to make hand-held digitial scopes, their own games, and so
on.
(a gameboy is essentially a z80.  Lots of development SW is available.)
One complexity the the memory banking controller used to address more
than
64k of rom, plus nvram, plus whatever.  nice little custom asic by
nintendo,
I guess.  Not TOO hard to duplicate in static logic, and pretty trivial
to
do in a reasonable PAL-like device.  UNTIL you realize that the average
PAL
probably eats more power than the entire rest of the box combined :-( )

BillW

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