Embedded Technology Journal Update

a techfocus media publication :: March 20, 2007 :: volume VI, no. 11

FROM THE EDITOR

This week, ARM announced the Cortex-M1 – a new processor core optimized for FPGA implementation. Along with Actel, they have blazed a new trail in embedded system design with easy-to-adopt system-on-chip platforms that combine ARM’s processor expertise with Actel’s FPGA devices. The combination makes a compelling entry in the low- to mid-volume system-on-chip market. Our latest feature article has the details.

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Kevin Morris – Editor
Embedded Technology Journal

ANNOUNCEMENTS

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CURRENT FEATURE ARTICLES

ARM Optimizes for FPGA
ARM/Actel Announce Cortex-M1
Mixing Fossil Fuel and Electrons
by Jim Turley, Embedded Technology Journal
Managing the Middle Manager
An Engineer's Guide
Is it February? Then it must be embedded world.
by Dick Selwood
Doin’ Hard Time
Wind River Adds RTLinux
Software Supervision
Wind River Lab Diagnostics
Pushing a Progressive Paradigm
Encirq Opens Access

JOURNAL WEBCASTS

(NEW!)Low Power FPGA design with Actel IGLOO, the 5µW FPGA for cool portables sponsored by Actel

ARM7, Analog,Flash and FPGA in a Single Chip Actel's ARM in Fusion sponsored by Actel

Introducing Actel Fusion – the world’s first Flash-based FPGA, with Memory and Analog front end sponsored by Actel

Introducing Spartan-3AN FPGAs – Non-Volatile Secure Platform for Highest System Integration sponsored by Xilinx

Embedded Design with LatticeMico32 Open, Free 32-bit Soft Processor sponsored by Lattice Semiconductor

Speed Adoption of Intel® Multi-Core Processors with VirtualLogix Real-Time Virtualization™ Technology sponsored by VirtualLogix

Harnessing ModelSim Designer to Improve your FPGA Design Productivity sponsored by Mentor Graphics

ARM Optimizes for FPGA
ARM/Actel Announce Cortex-M1

“The translation of a conception, which was at the beginning, which is intended for ASIC in a FPGA, can poor and ineffective results give.”

So says the Google Translate tool, when offered the sentence:

“Translating a design that was originally intended for ASIC into an FPGA can yield poor and inefficient results.”

…and asked to translate from English to French to German and back to English. Google’s translation technology is actually very good – and the quality of these results is muc
h higher than what we’d expect when, say, synthesizing a piece of ASIC IP into an FPGA. Get the picture? If you want a good quality, high-performance FPGA design, you need to create your register-transfer-level (RTL) description with a micro-architecture that is optimized for the coarse-grained architecture of FPGAs. Automatic mapping, while technically feasible, yields far from optimal results.

When designing a processor core, however, this is exactly the approach most people use – until now. Most processor IP was originally created for ASIC design and is carefully hand-optimized for best performance and area efficiency in an ASIC. When synthesizing those cores for FPGA, however, we often get pretty pathetic results.

ARM realized this and designed their new Cortex-M1 processor core specifically for FPGA implementation. As a result, we have a new processor that can be used in system-on-chip FPGAs that is far more efficient than typical ASIC cores synthesized into FPGA. ARM announced the new core this week in conjunction with Actel, who is licensing the core for use in their non-volatile FPGA families. [more]