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Old 22nd Sep 2020, 8:50 am   #3
jjl
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Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Ware, Herts. UK.
Posts: 1,082
Default Re: Future Supplies of Standards Converters?.

FPGAs are in very widespread use in all sorts of high volume systems and are likely to remain that way for decades to come.

As far as I understand it, there are two problems with the Aurora design in that the FPGA used is becoming obsolete and that the video decoder devices used are also proving hard to source - if there is no longer any analogue broadcast TV, why would the manufacturers continue to make such devices.

In principle, it should be straightforward to port such a design to a current FPGA type but the newer FPGA would be highly likely to have a different pin-out and package type, so a new PCB design would be required. The video decoder issue is a bit more challenging, but in principle, with a fast ADC and the decoder processing implemented in FPGA logic, this should be solvable. I believe that Frank Cuffe - the Hedghog designer has been thinking about this.

I think that FPGAs are now the only practical way to go for standards conversion and in many ways the standards conversion problem is becoming easier to solve as current FPGAs can be found with fast ADCs and large amounts of on-chip memory so external devices can be eliminated. The challenges are that such devices come in BGA packages and often require multiple power supplies with well defined power sequencing. This can be solved by purchasing a ready-made module containing the FPGA and its power supplies.

John
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