Thanks for the info, this is just a personal hobby project and wanted
to keep it as low as possible. I like the FPGA idea. You mentioned
getting FPGA chips for $10, do you recommend a place to get them? Can
you program a FPGA chip kinda like you can a PIC chip? Then put the
FPGA chip on a breadboard?

Some of the reading I've done made me think FPGA's were built into the
board so the CPU(?) aren't interchangeable.

-Josh

On 9/11/07, Shawn Tan <shawn.tan@aeste.net> wrote:
> On Tuesday 11 September 2007 15:57:03 Joshua Shriver wrote:
> > I've been reading more on VHDL.  Anyone know of a place that can take
> > a VHDL program and generate hardware based on it, at a reasonable
> > price? (academic level) not for a business and in low quantities
>
> You will first need to convert the VHDL design into a gate-level netlist
> through a process called "synthesis". Once this is done, the netlist can be
> turned into hardware.
>
> The cheapest way of doing it would be to use a programmable FPGA. There are
> many FPGA prototyping boards that you can buy online from around US$ 100.
> FPGA chips themselves can be bought from around US$ 10. If you intend to use
> it for a classroom, this might be the best way to do it. The FPGA vendors
> also provide their own synthesis tools.
>
> If you wish to fabricate an actual ASIC, you may be able to get access to some
> discounted tape-out runs if you're an academic institution. Depending on the
> size of the design and the process chosen, this may be from around US$ 1,000.
> You will need proper EDA tools (Mentor, Synopsys, Cadence) and they usually
> provide an academic discount. I wouldn't recommend this for classroom
> purposes.
>
> Cheers.
>
> --
> with metta,
> Shawn Tan
>
> Aeste Works (M) Sdn Bhd - Engineering Elegance
> http://www.aeste.net
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