Given that we can now put a CPU of Pentium class into a single FPGA device with a megabyte of RAM in the same chip and hang a 386ex class CPU off the side as "a low speed co-processor and controller" then we have something serious. The FPGA is 33mm square (in a 1020 pin BGA package) so in the same space we can put near a gigabyte of Flash memory and a gigabyte of RAM takes only that much space again. Our development has been with DOS and C on this type of platform for some years now - it has served us well, but we alredy have some embedded Linux prototypes in the lab that could end up being small enough to fit in a Blackberry! Who needs to worry about footprint, really, lets just use what makes the job easiest.

jdtoronto