[avr-chat] Re: [avr-gcc-list] avr = FPGA??

[David Brown]

As someone else suggested earlier, I've cc'ed this to the avr-chat list in
the hope of moving this interesting but OT thread over there...

I haven't tried the opencores.org AVR cores, nor have I heard from anyone
who has used them.  There may be questions about the legality of using
them - I'd imagine that at the very least, "AVR" is trademarked, so you
would have to refer to it as "an eight-bit RISC core".

If you are looking for a good soft cpu, you are probably better off using
something specifically made for FPGAs - the AVR is optomised to be a hard
macrocell for ASICs, and is therefore not ideal for a soft cpu (although far
better than fixed designs, like the 8051).  Unless you are just looking for
interest, or have very particular requirements, you would almost certainly
be better off looking at the Nios II for Altera chips (or the Microblaize
for Xilinx, which I have never used).  The size on the fpga is probably not
much more than a generic AVR core, but it will be much faster and has a
range of peripherals and development tools (gcc-based) designed specifically
for fpgas.  Of course, it's not free (except as a trial version), but the
development kit is well worth the money.

David



> To bad I'm usually bound to a specific type of FPGA.
>
> Regarding the cores at opencores.org. Are anyone of you using them?
> I have looked at them briefly and they seem rather immature. Lack of
> documentation and so on.
>
> /Mikael
>
>
> Anton Erasmus wrote:
>
> >On 30 May 2005 at 10:26, Mikael Krus wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>Speaking about FPGAs.
> >>Anyone know of a free Atmel processor core for FPGA implementation? Is
> >>it allowed from Atmel anyway?
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >If you want the combination of MCU + FPGA, you can always use the FPSLIC.
> >
> >Regards
> >  Anton Erasmus
> >
> >__________________________________________
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> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
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