The e8051 was not the one to which I referred. It was that "other" one. However, that e8051 operates pretty fast in fast FPGA, but in the more common quality, lower-cost SPARTAN series, they only run at ~90 MIPS. That's respectable, for sure, but since one can buy a commercial part that can run that fast ... and Erik's said for about 6 or 7 dollars ...

I haven't yet read the "fine print" on the e8051, but it looks pretty good. However, the last time I got a quotation from Avnet, they wanted over $1000 per FPGA at 10k units annually, for a mid-sized Virtex part, so we bought a comparable ALTERA device which ended up costing about $15. I doubt they sold many at that high price, but quoting us such nonsense drove us away from XILINX and, of course, AVNET. That takes the "high end" of that performance range out of the picture. Too bad!

RE