IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Spring 2018 - 36
The Practical
Applications and
Uses of FPGAs
Insights from historical, current, and future perspectives
Mike Dini
I
first used program-
mable logic in the early
1980s as random glue
logic: 16L8, 16R4, 16R6,
and 16R8 (Figures 1 and
2). These devices, from Monolithic Mem-
ories, had eight outputs and typically
came in a 20-pin dual in-line package
(DIP). A hardware designer would choose
the device based on whether zero, four,
six, or eight flip-flops were needed.
Programmable logic was revolution-
ary-a vast number of random logic
chips, sometimes dozens, could be
consolidated into a single chip using
this technology. Moreover, the logic
did not need to be correct or even
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSSC.2018.2822860
Date of publication: 22 June 2018
36
s p r I n g 2 0 18
determined before manufacturing
and assembling the circuit board. This
significantly sped up the design pro-
cess while reducing the risk. That, of
course, assumed you put the clock on
pin 1, the output enable on pin 11, and
made certain that you didn't need the
feedback on the outer edge outputs of
the 16L8 (pins 19 and 12). The 16V8, pio-
neered by Lattice, had a variable num-
ber of flip-flops (up to eight) and was
reprogrammable. It took some number
of years for the tools and the price to
adapt to the more flexible GAL16V8,
but ultimately it won out over the more
rigid 16L8/16R4/16R6/16R8.
The Signetics 82S153 (PLS153, Fig-
ure 3) was a programmable logic array
(PLA) as opposed to a programmable
array logic (PAL), and it was the first
IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE
device I used. The difference between
a PLA and a PAL is subtle, involves law-
yers, and, in retrospect, is not worth
describing. The 82S105 (PLS105) (Fig-
ure 4) was an interesting device tar-
geted to the implementation of state
machines. Complicated state machines
were very harsh to design before de-
vices such as this were available. Prior
to this device, a read-only memory and
a bank of flip-flops was the approach.
The difference between Mealy versus
Moore state machines was one of those
"gotcha" job interview questions, a pre-
cursor to the bizarre interview ques-
tions asked today.
It is important to remember that, in
the 1980s, the devices had actual pins
and were one-time devices program-
mable (OTP). So after programming,
1943-0582/18©2018IEEE
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Spring 2018
Contents
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