PICs, ASICs, FPGAs, OOPICs, Structured ASICs, Basic Stamps

[tmort]

I've been told there is some sort of low cost way to build an IC using software to pick the devices you want to build your circuit out of.

I've looked into a few of the above and nothing seems very inexpensive for low volume. OOPIC and Basic Stamp would seem to be the best for very low volume, but, are pretty much logic devices rather than devices for building complete circuits.

Is there any such thing? What does inexpensive mean?

Thanks

 

[Marks256]

What? Do you mean a microcontroller? You want to have an IC custom made?

 

[tmort]

Yes,

I think what I mean is a Hybrid thick film ASIC

 

[Marks256]

i am not aware of any place that will custom make an IC. If this is possible, then please let me know! I have a few that could be made!

 

[dknguyen]

I think he is referring to when you use an FPGA to build an ASIC or DSP inside, except in this case, it sounds like there is softare with a bunch of ICs already in memory and you just pick the one you want and it programs the "FPGA-like" device.

 

[crust]

There are FPGAs like that, often their toolchain has microcontrollers, etc that you can choose from and implement them in the part. Compared to ASICs FPGAs are inexpensive, but they are still very pricey parts. Bigger FPGAs are easily in the 1K-2K US in price. Simple toolchains are free, but the tool chains for complex parts are also expensive.

 

[dknguyen]

The DSP FPGAs with dual PowerPC cores are like $8000! Yowzers!

 

[i_build_stuff]

Those multi-$1000 FPGAs also have some pretty amazing features (200k+ logic blocks, hundreds of multipliers, etc.).

The best prices I've seen on PLDs are from Lattice Semiconductor--they have FPGAs in the $100 range with some pretty serious specs, and their software is only about $500 (most vendors charge INSANE prices for that).

As for the libraries of parts (IP cores), as far as I know, all the vendors offer those. In most cases, they have some free ones that come with their software, and others that you pay for per-chip. There are also open-source ones from places like opencores.org.

[edit]
You can also get custom chips (ASIC) made, and the prices per-chip are extremely low. However, they will want a couple million bucks up-front to make the masks and get production started.

 

[hjames]

I haven't seen any recent comparisons between Lattice and the "big two" Xilinx and Altera. I'm pretty sure all of them have a pretty smooth continum of products ranging from $10 - $x00. Xilinx and Altera also both have free versions of their software which tends to be pretty reasonable for for the cheaper parts as well.

 

[Oznog]

OK first what do you WANT to do?
PIC is quite cheap! dsPIC33 has incredible power at a cheap price too.

PIC can have many many hardware peripherals depending on the part you choose. They're onboard and you can use it or leave it. It can be programmed to do, well, just about anything! OK, not live video or be an ethernet router... again, what do YOU want to do?

OOPIC and BASIC Stamp are unnecessarily expensive repackaging of a PIC. They're typically very poor capabilities, outrageously expensive and I wouldn't really recommend them to anybody. I REALLY wouldn't recommend them for anybody wanting to do serious work.

 

[dknguyen]

THe first one I used was an OOPic and pretty much 20 minutes after I started using it I decided I wasn't going to use "interpreter" microcontrollers for any other projects. It's just so limited compared to what you can do with the full power of C.

 

[tmort]

I just want to make a pretty simple pH meter amplifier circuit. The circuit I have just consists of two opamps, some resistors, and a diode.

Ulitmately I want to hook this circuit to a datalogger and a display. It would be great if there was one PIC with all the hardware I need for that.

Do the hardware devices on the PICs correspond with standard component numbers?

Can you recommend and good reading on PICs and PIC programming

Thanks


I did find a place that can make custom hybird circuits for about $1000 setup cost - **broken link removed**

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

I just want to make a pretty simple pH meter amplifier circuit. The circuit I have just consists of two opamps, some resistors, and a diode.

Ulitmately I want to hook this circuit to a datalogger and a display. It would be great if there was one PIC with all the hardware I need for that.

Plenty of PIC's have all you need, basically analogue input, output to an LCD, and a serial port - 18 pin ones might have enough pins, depending on exactly what you require (16F88 or 16F819), if not use a 28 pin (16F876) or even a 40 pin (16F877).

Do the hardware devices on the PICs correspond with standard component numbers?

No, what use would that be?.

Can you recommend and good reading on PICs and PIC programming

Check my tutorials, which have pretty well everything you need!.

 

[tmort]

I only had a chance to look over the tutorials briefly and think I may need to start with something more basic on the syntax and what functions, etc are available and how to put them together.

I'll post in the discussion forum on the PIC site