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Soft Core War
LatticeMico32 Opens the Field
In another of their trademark one-two punch
announcement flurries, Lattice Semiconductor paired up their low-cost SerDes
announcement we covered last week [SEE ARTICLE]
with an announcement of a new 32-bit RISC processor core that is compatible
with their range of both high-performance and value-based FPGA families. The
new offering takes a different tack from previous FPGA-based processors, with a
completely open use model for a proprietary soft-core processor. Lattice
’s strategy could help level the playing field in the odd array of
offerings currently available to design teams creating FPGA-based
systems-on-chip (SoCs).
Before FPGAs became viable system-on-chip platforms, there
were two simple basic food groups in the embedded processor world: stand-alone
processors for board- and module-level integration and processor IP cores for
system-on-chip integration. Some of the most successful offerings today are
processor architectures that managed to span both of those domains, such as ARM
’s wildly successful architectures that have attained widespread adoption
both as flexible IP cores in ASIC SoC implementations and in high-value,
stand-alone chipsets for board-level integration.
Recently (as we’ve thoroughly documented in these
pages), FPGAs have shrunk and grown to the point that they, too, are viable
options for system-level integration. When we hit the point that an FPGA could
house a reasonable 32-bit processor capable of running an OS or RTOS, enough
peripherals to construct a useful machine, and enough memory to run an
interesting application, we entered a new era of embedded processing options.
The situation with FPGA-based processors is unique, however,
with several factors separating the new environment from the existing
mainstream. First, early attempts at embedding hard processing elements in FPGA
families failed, as none of the players managed to mix a chip that offered
on-chip processing power matching what could be added externally for less
money. Soft-core processors tended to be preferred because of their greater
degree of flexibility and because they didn’t increase the cost of
devices for applications where a processor was not needed. [more] |
