Good assessment and I would agree with what you say about FPGAs and particularly the Spartan-3 - we use them all the time. I notice Xilinx have recently started to pitch FPGAs towards the DSP markets, however I am yet to see how well they will stand up to dedicated DSP devices, afterall DSP-cores are suited to the addition-multiplication-shift routines that lie at the heart of DSP algorithms.ASIC - Best Performance, highest initial cost! (talking $100000s)
FPGA - very good performance, all digital (some exceptions), fairly inexpensive, depends on family, they range from like 10$ to 3000$ per FPGA
CPLD - Don't really know much, seems to be for lower power, cost, and performance applications
I have used a Spartan 3 FPGA in the past on a little PCB and was really impressed with its capabilities. Parallel processing is the power of a FPGA design and they are quite competitive with DSP technology. DSP usually uses a single instruction set flow, which can be limiting. As far as flexibility, price, and performance, I believe FPGAs are the way to go
Steve
I recall when Xilinx started pitching the DSP-merits of the Spartan-3 range: http://www.xilinx.com/publications/xcellonline/xcell_52/xc_s3dsp52.htmXilinx makes a new series of Spartans, the Spartan 3-DSP, which is meant for the type of operations usually done via DSP processors. They added in "xtreme DSP' slices that are present in their higher end FPGAs, which taylor to MAC routines,etc.
Steve
by Jake Hertz
by Duane Benson
by Jake Hertz