Re: FPGA Soft Core CPUs

Jack Klein skrev:
> Parts obsolescence is biting again, and at least one of my EEs is
> insisting that we spin replacement boards with soft-core processors in
> FPGAs.
>
> There are several things I don't like about that.
>
> First, how robust are these systems. What if power is lost during
> updating the configuration device?
>
> Second, I don't like the holy wars among our EEs. Most of them use
> Altera and wouldn't touch Xilinx to save their lives. But one guy
> uses only Xilinx and won't give the Altera rep the time of day. This
> hasn't bothered me up until now, when we put together a peripheral
> that is accessed to a microcontroller or DSP, because we define an
> interface and they meet it. I don't need to care who the FPGA source
> is.
>
> But if we're talking soft core, I'm not going to allow our embedded
> software department get saddled with supporting both NIOS and Micro
> Blaze.

> So third, I'd be grateful for any experiences with either soft core,
> or even better both, with a comparison between the two.
>
> And does anybody have any experience with the synthesizable ARM soft
> core for FPGA? Unless there's a serious handicap, I'd prefer ARM if
> we do soft core, we've already good tools and programmer experience.
>
> Any and all comments, real or delusional, welcome.
>

Why not do a CPU module with a micro.
If the micro goes tits up, you are bound to find another.
and no need to redesign anything but the CPU module.

If you use external memory you may want to do this anyway to protect
against memory obsolecense.



Best Regards
Ulf Samuelsson