[Cryptech Tech] The Past and Future of FPGA Soft Processors

[Joachim Strömbergson]

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Aloha!

Randy Bush wrote:
> https://fpgacpu.wordpress.com/2014/12/31/the-past-and-future-of-fpga-soft-processors/
>
>  yes, i am spending time catching up on reading, and torturing you
> with it :)

A really, really good presentation by Jan Gray. I remember the first
postings to com.arch.fpga about the first cores.

The Altera Nios was the first soft core I used in several designs. Then
it was either 16-bit or 32-bit and you had to decide what you needed.
Altera was fairly quick to introduce good dev tools to design the SoC
around the CPU and integrate peripherals and generate the BSP/HAL. Nios
early on got the ability to add application specification instructions
and execution modules to the pipeline and use them from SW in a good
way. Overall, Altera has been really good at the tooling for their soft
processors.

I actually worked with Göran Bilski when his soft CPU core was used to
drive testbenches, a core that became Microblaze and is still being
developed by Göran.

A good example of how much performance one can get in a FPGA device is
this cute little Cray-1 for your desktop:

http://www.chrisfenton.com/homebrew-cray-1a/

- -- 
Med vänlig hälsning, Yours

Joachim Strömbergson - Alltid i harmonisk svängning.
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 Joachim Strömbergson          Secworks AB          joachim at secworks.se
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