[Hardware] Fully unrolled RC5 on FPGA

[John L. Bass]

"todthgie" <todthgie at hotmail.com> writes:
> I think that if we manage to keep the board as versatile as possible and add 
> some common stuf like memmory and also some
> interfaces (like ethernet usb ect and maybe route the unused pins to a 
> header) and is also usable outside of a pc there might be a LOT of people 
> interesed
> also outside of dnet. because i think that there are a lot of ppl out there 
> that want to experiment with high speed data prossesing and dsp.
> and if its around $400 ist comparable to a board elektor sels (but i guess 
> that that board has a smaller fpga)
> i have one of them and the biggest problem that i have is there are almost 
> no free pins to connect stuff like a high speed adc to.
> if this modules has a lot of connection options and a fast fpga for around 
> $400 i might be buying one or more for som projects of mine.
> i think we somehome agree on what to include on the board.
> Reinder de Haan

It's one thing to do a short run of a very simple board for hobbiests, and quite
another to do production runs. It's easy to hold the costs down for a dead
simple hobby board and a single short run. No test fixtures. No inventory.
No support. ... etc.

Anyone doing this for a living (more than one short run) would need to factor in
a living wage, return allowance, and markup on the parts enough to cover
inventory holding costs (this stuff is expensive to inventory). The more parts
you add to a built board, the more expensive it gets to mfg, test and inventory.
Industry typical is 3-5X parts cost, so this could easily turn into a couple
thousand dollar production board, more with distribution markups.

In general low cost Xilinx proto boards are limited to the Webpack size.
If the fpga is larger, then the customer also needs to purchase expensive Xilinx
tools to program it, and volume drops off like a rock. For this project, one
person with access to the tools could setup the RC5 bitstreams, and share it.