I was using Xilinx FPGAs in 1998 and they were saying next year then for such a thing.

It's 15 years later and it's still the same with shitty overpriced tools, per-vendor ghettos and crazy per-unit prices. Granted we've got a couple of ARM cores instead of a single PPC 603 and a clock speed ramp but that's it.

If they snap out of that crap, perhaps, one day we'll reach utopia.

Then again, fucking rich engineering companies over for wads of cash is better for business.