28 Aug
1999
28 Aug
'99
8:54 a.m.
On Sat, 28 Aug 1999, Richard Erlacher wrote:
please see my embedded comments below.
Dick
I haven't seen an FPGA (yet) which has "soft" configuration which can be
changed on the fly. I think Triscend (www.triscend.com) may be heading in
that direction, together with their 805x core. I've read a little about it,
but as far as I know, the way to change it is to reset and reload the part,
perhaps from a different configuration file.
I saw a blurb about that several years ago in one of the trade rags.
Basically, the part was sector based (not their name for it). You could
reload a portion of the FPGA while the rest continued to operate. The
example that was given was loading different image processing algorithms
into the chip while the rest of the chip continued to pull in and output
the video stream.
One thing I find shameful about the FPGA makers is that they have all this
secrecy about one aspect or another of THEIR intellectual property as
pertains to their parts, yet they do absolutely nothing to protect YOUR IP
as it sits in a completely visible medium. If they would at least provide a
feature to allow you to flash in a persistent encryption circuit not
detectable from the outside but permanently associated with a given design .
. .
Publishing what each bit in the bitstream did would get your competitor
half way to having a schematic of your design.
clint