FW: [Mep-dev] Device Selection

[Timothy J. Salo]

Assi Friedman wrote:
> The DSP vs. processor trade is slowly fading away in the commercial world
> due to the morphing of FPGAs into DSP machines.  That changes everything
> since you can integrate the advantages of both into a single device.
> So there is no reason why a moderate density Xilinx Virtex-IV won't be able
> to handle FEC decoding and higher level signal processing in a single
> device.

Neat.

At a minimum, this suggests that sampling the analog waveform
probably ought not be separated from at least some higher-level
functions, such as demodulating symbols, and maybe even decoding FEC.
(Right?)

Does the use of an FPGA constrain the choice of FEC?  (I assume
that different FEC schemes have different storage and computational
requirements.)

This leaves the small matter of programming the FPGA.  Do
we need to consciously develop more FPGA programming talent
in the amateur digital communications communities?

-tjs