2 ms·

What was the XC2064 used in, as far as like commercially available products or similar, if you know off hand? I know some network cards and things like that ha

What was the XC2064 used in, as far as like commercially available products or similar, if you know off hand? I know some network cards and things like that have FPGAs.

rasz 2y ago
For example 1995 Snappy Video Snapshot LPT dongle by Paul Montgomery (Newtek co-founder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Montgomery#Play_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Montgomery#Play_Inc.). @TubeTimeUS on twitter did a Snappy deep dive, teardown and reverse engineering down to schematic and figuring out remarked "PLAY HD-1500" main chip is just a XC2064 FPGA. PLL + 30msps ADC + special 2Mbit video ram capable of holding whole field = this thing grabs whole one field of video all at once after perfectly synchronizing to 14.318MHz video clock. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1301990455182155776 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1301990455182155776 wiki: "Snappy was the first mainstream video input device for Windows personal computers, with Play selling over US$25 million of Snappy in its first year.[9] Byte Magazine awarded Snappy its Technical Excellence award in December 1995, stating "Every once in a while, we see a product so impressive, it makes us rethink an entire category. That was certainly the case with Play Inc.'s Snappy."[10]"
- seanriddle 2y ago
  NewTek's Video Toaster had three XC2018s.
rwmj 2y ago
At one place I worked around 1991-4, we used them for control hardware for synchrotron beamlines. These were produced in a very small numbers (10s of units) so the cost of the FPGAs wasn't a significant problem, unlike mass market products. At the time we used Altera CPLDs rather than Xilinx. The main differences were: the Xilinx chips needed a small serial ROM located next to the chip to load the bitstream at power-on, whereas the Altera chips used (I guess) some kind of technology similar to EEPROM so they maintained their programming when powered off. The software ecosystem of the two was completely different and a significant lock-in. Once you'd chosen Altera and their Max+Plus II software, the only way to "port" to a Xilinx chip would be to completely reimplement it.

What was the XC2064 used in, as far as like commercially available products or similar, if you know off hand? I know some network cards and things like that have FPGAs.

rasz 2y ago

For example 1995 Snappy Video Snapshot LPT dongle by Paul Montgomery (Newtek co-founder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Montgomery#Play_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Montgomery#Play_Inc.). @TubeTimeUS on twitter did a Snappy deep dive, teardown and reverse engineering down to schematic and figuring out remarked "PLAY HD-1500" main chip is just a XC2064 FPGA. PLL + 30msps ADC + special 2Mbit video ram capable of holding whole field = this thing grabs whole one field of video all at once after perfectly synchronizing to 14.318MHz video clock. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1301990455182155776 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1301990455182155776 wiki: "Snappy was the first mainstream video input device for Windows personal computers, with Play selling over US$25 million of Snappy in its first year.[9] Byte Magazine awarded Snappy its Technical Excellence award in December 1995, stating "Every once in a while, we see a product so impressive, it makes us rethink an entire category. That was certainly the case with Play Inc.'s Snappy."[10]"

seanriddle 2y ago
NewTek's Video Toaster had three XC2018s.

rwmj 2y ago

At one place I worked around 1991-4, we used them for control hardware for synchrotron beamlines. These were produced in a very small numbers (10s of units) so the cost of the FPGAs wasn't a significant problem, unlike mass market products. At the time we used Altera CPLDs rather than Xilinx. The main differences were: the Xilinx chips needed a small serial ROM located next to the chip to load the bitstream at power-on, whereas the Altera chips used (I guess) some kind of technology similar to EEPROM so they maintained their programming when powered off. The software ecosystem of the two was completely different and a significant lock-in. Once you'd chosen Altera and their Max+Plus II software, the only way to "port" to a Xilinx chip would be to completely reimplement it.