The Spartan®-3 family of Field-Programmable Gate Arraysis specifically designed to meet the needs of high volume,cost-sensitive consumer electronic applications. Theeight-member family offers densities ranging from 50,000 to5,000,000 system gates, as shown in Table 1.The Spartan-3 family builds on the success of the earlierSpartan-IIE family by increasing the amount of logicresources, the capacity of internal RAM, the total number ofI/Os, and the overall level of performance as well as byimproving clock management functions. Numerousenhancements derive from the Virtex®-II platformtechnology. These Spartan-3 FPGA enhancements,combined with advanced process technology, deliver morefunctionality and bandwidth per dollar than was previouslypossible, setting new standards in the programmable logicindustry.Because of their exceptionally low cost, Spartan-3 FPGAsare ideally suited to a wide range of consumer electronicsapplications, including broadband access, homenetworking, display/projection and digital televisionequipment.The Spartan-3 family is a superior alternative to maskprogrammed ASICs. FPGAs avoid the high initial cost, thelengthy development cycles, and the inherent inflexibility ofconventional ASICs. Also, FPGA programmability permitsdesign upgrades in the field with no hardware replacementnecessary, an impossibility with ASICs.