Also the question i would ask is what are you expecting to get out of the vhdl route because the main advantages are that its easily customisable,you can produce a very fast very small 852 compatable core and at over some number of devices per year it becomes viable to move to full ASIC but as you are looing at an initial investment in terms of NRE of $50,000 or more then that isnt always a good incentive.