2 chip cheap solution

we could:
use one of these controllers from microchip (or 2) for the ethernet MAC.
They are 2 dollars each (silly money).
We could couple this with a really cheap 8 bit controller for programming.
Also we could use a cheaper FPGA as a mac is about the size or the proccessor core and I was having trouble fitting it on a smaller FPGA.
Coupled with another package (not VQ100 but surface mount) available it would be a good, cheap solution.

It communicates with the proccessor chips by SPI (serial), which is easy to find on a microcontroller and is a small, free FPGA core.

Actel FPGAs are a bit expensive (£20), so we will have to weigh arm VS cost, unless we can find another alternative.
Driver writing for an OS might be needed, but would be a small matter for a more custom node implimentation based on your compiler as we'd need to do it anyway, plus I think it would be a small matter.

Also as we now have an external mac, a proccessor + memory + peripheral controller implementation might be an idea, I'll look into it, although giving the user a programmable FPGA and memory on a remotely programmable board is a nice idea.

SH

+ what proccessors does CILC compile for? I'll try and find a way of using one of them