On Wed, 2007-06-20 at 22:42 -0700, Tobias Gogolin wrote:
> This brings me to another question!
> what is the lowest cost FPGA infrastructure that is runtime reprogrammable?

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking, but SRAM-based FPGAs are the
lowest cost (per gate equivalent), since they don't need the extra
processing steps to support flash cells (or whatever).

Any SRAM-based FPGA can be (re)configured from any microprocessor,
either through its JTAG port or directly through its PROM interface
(by bit-banging, if necessary). You just need to have enough memory
on the micro to hold the FPGA bitmap(s) you want to use. I'm most
familiar with Xilinx products, for which this is well documented,
but I'm sure all the other SRAM-based FPGA vendors support similar
functionality.

Partial reconfiguration, in which other parts of the FPGA continue to
function during the process, is a more complex question. Not all FPGA
families support this, and I believe it can only be done through the
JTAG interface on those that do.

-- Dave Tweed
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