[Fpga-synth] Try out spartan3e projects, questions

[malik martin]

just my 2 cents, but isn't ghz speed unnecessary in a dedicated processor?
unless maybe you were going for an embeded system?

On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 9:14 PM, Dave Manley <dlmanley at sonic.net> wrote:

> malik martin wrote:
>
>> Very interesting. Thanks for the info :)
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 5:11 PM, Eric Brombaugh <ebrombaugh1 at cox.net<mailto:
>> ebrombaugh1 at cox.net>> wrote:
>>
>>    malik martin wrote:
>>
>>        I hope i'm not OT'ing your thread, but do you think spartan 3es
>>        are capable of dsp functionality?
>>        and what makes the dedicated DSPs different?
>>        I want to get into DSPs as well. I didn't know that AD made the
>>        SHARCs.
>>
>>
>>    Definitely not OT.
>>
>>    Yes you can do DSP with Spartan 3E parts. They're fairly good at it
>>    too - witness the DSP that Scott G. has done in his various synths.
>>
>>    What's the difference between a DSP and an FPGA? That's a FAQ that
>>    you should be able to google. Put simply though, a DSP is a
>>    specialized computer that can handle multiplies & adds very quickly
>>    and usually has extra addressing modes to make certain operations
>>    like convolution go fast. An FPGA is a bag of random gates, memory &
>>    (these days) multipliers that you can hook up virtually any way you
>>    want. They overlap in some ways, but FPGAs are better for really
>>    high-speed processing, while DSPs allow for more complex but slower
>>    algorithms. It's a very grey area though...
>>
>>    Eric
>>
>
> I'll chime in with one comment: the max FPGA frequency is no where near the
> max frequency of modern processors.  I haven't looked at DSPs in a long
> time, but assume some must be able to run in the GHz range, while most FPGAs
> are going to be limited to a few hundred MHz at most (with any significant
> amount of logic).  In terms of clock speed only, what is the fastest DSP out
> there?  I see some AD Blackfin rated at 750MHz.
>
> -Dave
>
>
>
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