Are there any FPGAs with a low pin-count (8 to 16) and small package and hopefully cheap (nearly as cheap as a micro)?
It seems that FPGAs are typically intended for massively parallel & fast applications but with high-speed serial links, the pin count and large package size isn't required. PICs and other small micros are typically used for small/cheap logic controllers – and we're currently using a small cheap ARM Cortex STM32 for that purpose – but next I'll need something much faster.
I found a similar question here and the answer was no. If the answer really is no, I wonder why not?
Best Answer
Nobody really makes an FPGA that small. It's not really enough IO pins to do much of anything with. You can get FPGAs with 32-64 pins, though.
Most of the cost of FPGAs is testing. Each device is tested to ensure that all of the LUTs, flip flops, block RAMs, routing matrix components, transceivers, and IOBs work perfectly for all possible configurations. The devices are also binned into speed grades. This is time consuming, and time is money, so they charge for it. However, some of the smaller Spartan 6 FPGAs only cost around $10 in single unit quantities, which is on par with the price of a microcontroller. You're not going to get one in a DIP package, but you can get the small ones in TQFP packages and then load them onto a breakout board.