AXP configurable logic design contest wrapup

So its time to finalize my project for the AXP Logic design contest. After having looked at the evaluation board, explained the electronic circuit as well as how I build the rest of the project, the last part the rules are calling for is a small essay describing my experiences with the AXP logic gates, the evaluation board and the project in general.

So here we go. The word count has been limited to 250, which I exactly maxed out.

So, how was the project going, and how was working with the eval board? It was fun! Working with the eval board was easy (apart from having got take off all the resistors to get to really low power consumption). And its impressive what tricks you can do with configurable logic gates. The boards are nicelay layed out, all signal are accesible easily. For a new revision, making them better stackable when broken apart would be nice (so the power connections should better line up then, and mounting holes are a good idea too).

I was able, after looking at the data sheet, to implement rather tricky and even time-dependent logic. Since the number of gates was limited for the contest I needed some external components, but they could be replaced with just one additional 1G57 gate.

The really low power consumption of the AXP logic gates was essential for coming up with my project design, otherwise it would have been much more complex. Even though my schematic looks quite complex, this are function that cannot be built from laogic gates. (Though one can build a H-bridge directly from logic gates, the currents will probably destroy them). And even if the logic part of the design seems to be small, there is some magic in there that just cannot be seen directly (since the gates are more complex on the inside that one can see from the outside).

Would I use them again? Sure, they are great for any kind of glue logic I might encounter in my future projects.

As a reference, I also provide the schematic in KiCAD format for download. If you want to just look at it, the PNG version can be found on the second post of the series.