440 macrocells, 9 ns pin-to-pin — the glue-logic sweet spot
The EPM570ZF256C7N is a MAX® II CPLD from Altera, packing 440 macrocells and 570 logic elements in a 256-MBGA (11x11 mm) footprint. With 160 user I/O and a 9 ns tpd(1) max propagation delay, it handles address decoding, bus bridging, and state-machine control at speeds that keep up with most 100 MHz-class processors without wait states.
I/O count and package — what fits on the board
The 256-TFBGA (11x11 mm, 0.8 mm ball pitch) gives you 160 available I/O — enough for a 32-bit data bus plus control signals and a handful of chip selects.
