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I've been asked to find the costs of swapping one of our LPC2294 prototypes
onto FPGA. If the move gets the OK, this is going to be a complete SoC
design (with a soft core). I've done various ARM7 (and PIC) designs but
this will be my first FPGA project.

In the archives for this group there is some discussion about some free
tools from pdqlogic http://www.pdqlogic.com/index.html. This company has a
neat board but I don't think the tools will help do the porting I need to
do (could be wrong?).

I couldn't find anything else in this archive : - surely someone else has
done this?

I've googled RapidiTTy (www.tte-systems.com). This seems to work with xilinx
FPGAs (only?), and comes with some kind of MIPS core in the package. The
www site says you can swap code between ARM and FPGA. If you've tried this
stuff, I'd appreciate any feedback (and costs - I couldn't get prices on
the tte site, and their sales guys don't seem to reply to mail on
Sundays...).

Thanks
LenRt.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


(You need to be a member of lpc2000 -- send a blank email to lpc2000-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )

----- Original Message -----
From: "Leonard Rohnert"
To:
Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2007 5:25 PM
Subject: [lpc2000] Tools to help port from LPC2294 to FPGA??
> I've been asked to find the costs of swapping one of our LPC2294
> prototypes
> onto FPGA.

Why? It'll be more expensive, slower and take a lot more power. OTOH, if you
need an FPGA in the system, it can make sense.

Leon


(You need to be a member of lpc2000 -- send a blank email to lpc2000-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )

Leonard Rohnert wrote:
>
> I've been asked to find the costs of swapping one of our LPC2294
> prototypes
> onto FPGA. If the move gets the OK, this is going to be a complete SoC
> design (with a soft core). I've done various ARM7 (and PIC) designs but
> this will be my first FPGA project.
>
> In the archives for this group there is some discussion about some free
> tools from pdqlogic http://www.pdqlogic .com/index. html.
> This company has a
> neat board but I don't think the tools will help do the porting I need to
> do (could be wrong?).
>
> I couldn't find anything else in this archive : - surely someone else has
> done this?
>

IIRC, yes, it was done, then they got sued by ARM Inc. for violating
their Intellectual Property. I believe that a court order forced them
to stop offering the core.

Look at some of the hits on:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=PicoTurbo+lexra+sued&btnG=Search

I would think that you would need a team of good lawyers and deep
pockets before you decide to go the infringement route?

TomW
--
Tom Walsh - WN3L - Embedded Systems Consultant
http://openhardware.net http://cyberiansoftware.com http://openzipit.org
"Windows? No thanks, I have work to do..."
----------------------------------------------------



(You need to be a member of lpc2000 -- send a blank email to lpc2000-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )

Leonard Rohnert wrote:
>
> I've been asked to find the costs of swapping one of our LPC2294
> prototypes
> onto FPGA. If the move gets the OK, this is going to be a complete SoC
> design (with a soft core). I've done various ARM7 (and PIC) designs but
> this will be my first FPGA project.
>
> In the archives for this group there is some discussion about some free
> tools from pdqlogic http://www.pdqlogic .com/index. html.
> This company has a
> neat board but I don't think the tools will help do the porting I need to
> do (could be wrong?).
>
> I couldn't find anything else in this archive : - surely someone else has
> done this?
>

If your boss is still insistent that "this must be done", have a look
over at http://www.opencores.org/browse.cgi/by_category

They are not ARM cores, but RISC cores. I doubt that you will find an
SoC in the list, but... One thing your boss should keep in mind is that
the ARM core has been around for many years, most of the problems in
that core are known. When dealing with your own custom FPGA core, you
don't know what hardware bug(s) are going to bite you.

TomW
TomW

--
Tom Walsh - WN3L - Embedded Systems Consultant
http://openhardware.net http://cyberiansoftware.com http://openzipit.org
"Windows? No thanks, I have work to do..."
----------------------------------------------------



(You need to be a member of lpc2000 -- send a blank email to lpc2000-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )

Tom,

Just to make it clear - we have ABSOLUTELY NO INTENTION of infringing any
copyrights, patents, etyc - and our FPGA won't include an ARM core. (In
fact, the RapidiTTy tools are based on a MIPS core - without patented
instructions, as far as I can tell.)

Still hoping someone can give me some feedback about use of these tools?

LenRt

On 7/1/07, Tom Walsh wrote:
>
> Leonard Rohnert wrote:
> >
> > I've been asked to find the costs of swapping one of our LPC2294
> > prototypes
> > onto FPGA. If the move gets the OK, this is going to be a complete SoC
> > design (with a soft core). I've done various ARM7 (and PIC) designs but
> > this will be my first FPGA project.
> >
> > In the archives for this group there is some discussion about some free
> > tools from pdqlogic http://www.pdqlogic .com/index. html.
> > < http://www.pdqlogic.com/index.html.> This company has a
> > neat board but I don't think the tools will help do the porting I need
> to
> > do (could be wrong?).
> >
> > I couldn't find anything else in this archive : - surely someone else
> has
> > done this?
> > IIRC, yes, it was done, then they got sued by ARM Inc. for violating
> their Intellectual Property. I believe that a court order forced them
> to stop offering the core.
>
> Look at some of the hits on:
> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=PicoTurbo+lexra+sued&btnG=Search
>
> I would think that you would need a team of good lawyers and deep
> pockets before you decide to go the infringement route?
>
> TomW
>
> --
> Tom Walsh - WN3L - Embedded Systems Consultant
> http://openhardware.net http://cyberiansoftware.com http://openzipit.org
> "Windows? No thanks, I have work to do..."
> ----------------------------------------------------
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


(You need to be a member of lpc2000 -- send a blank email to lpc2000-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )

Oh you mean porting software from an ARM-based LPC2294 to another
type of (soft-core) processor?

I think it depends a lot on the quality of the existing software and
whether it uses a lot of the LPC2294-specific features. It helps a
lot if the new processor uses at least the same basic bit-width,
alignment rules and endianness. When the software is nicely layered
then most of the work should be limited to the hardware abstraction
layer. This is not something that can be automated easily by some
tool.

Bertrik

Leonard Rohnert wrote:
> Tom,
>
> Just to make it clear - we have ABSOLUTELY NO INTENTION of infringing any
> copyrights, patents, etyc - and our FPGA won't include an ARM core. (In
> fact, the RapidiTTy tools are based on a MIPS core - without patented
> instructions, as far as I can tell.)
>
> Still hoping someone can give me some feedback about use of these tools?
>
> LenRt
>
> On 7/1/07, Tom Walsh wrote:
>> Leonard Rohnert wrote:
>>> I've been asked to find the costs of swapping one of our LPC2294
>>> prototypes
>>> onto FPGA. If the move gets the OK, this is going to be a complete SoC
>>> design (with a soft core). I've done various ARM7 (and PIC) designs but
>>> this will be my first FPGA project.
>>>
>>> In the archives for this group there is some discussion about some free
>>> tools from pdqlogic http://www.pdqlogic .com/index. html.
>>> < http://www.pdqlogic.com/index.html.> This company has a
>>> neat board but I don't think the tools will help do the porting I need
>> to
>>> do (could be wrong?).
>>>
>>> I couldn't find anything else in this archive : - surely someone else
>> has
>>> done this?
>>>
>> IIRC, yes, it was done, then they got sued by ARM Inc. for violating
>> their Intellectual Property. I believe that a court order forced them
>> to stop offering the core.
>>
>> Look at some of the hits on:
>> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=PicoTurbo+lexra+sued&btnG=Search
>>
>> I would think that you would need a team of good lawyers and deep
>> pockets before you decide to go the infringement route?



(You need to be a member of lpc2000 -- send a blank email to lpc2000-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )

Leonard Rohnert wrote:
>
> Tom,
>
> Just to make it clear - we have ABSOLUTELY NO INTENTION of infringing any
> copyrights, patents, etyc - and our FPGA won't include an ARM core. (In
>

Rather confusing, I would say. You come into an ARM special interest
mailing list, mention code running on an ARM processor (LPC2294), then
say that you want to run your software on an FPGA. Doh! What does that
suggest?

Why don't you go onto an FPGA special interest mailing list and ask them
the question?

Regards,

TomW
--
Tom Walsh - WN3L - Embedded Systems Consultant
http://openhardware.net http://cyberiansoftware.com http://openzipit.org
"Windows? No thanks, I have work to do..."
----------------------------------------------------



(You need to be a member of lpc2000 -- send a blank email to lpc2000-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )

--- In l...@yahoogroups.com, "Leonard Rohnert" wrote:
>
> Tom,
>
> Just to make it clear - we have ABSOLUTELY NO INTENTION of
infringing any
> copyrights, patents, etyc - and our FPGA won't include an ARM core. (In
> fact, the RapidiTTy tools are based on a MIPS core - without patented
> instructions, as far as I can tell.)
>
> Still hoping someone can give me some feedback about use of these tools?
>
> LenRt
>

I have worked with a couple of FPGA cores (the Z80 clone (T80cpu @
opencores) and one of my own). In both cases, complete operating
systems, compilers, assemblers and linkers were already available.
Without these I would still be loading machine language with console
switches - like the Altair 8800 when it first came out.

In my view, the hangup on building any CPU core is the assembler and C
compiler. So, look into LCC http://www.cs.princeton.edu/software/lcc/
a retargetable ANSI C compiler. Among other things, it generates
code for a MIPS R3000 but it can be retargeted to any reasonable
instruction set. There are retargetable assemblers as well.

However, both of my projects were microcomputers, not
microcontrollers. Anybody can build a CPU. Adding all the interface
gadgets takes real talent. USARTs, Timers, I2C, SPI, SSP, USB,
Ethernet: that's where it gets difficult. Oh, and integrate them with
the CPU...

As has been mentioned, there is a MIPS core available at opencores.org
but it is archtecturally limited so as not to infringe on the MIPS
patents and copyrights.

Another possibility is to license one of the microcomputer cores from
Xilinx or Altera. Development software is available as are a number
of peripherals. These cores are well known and I imagine support is
readily available.

I suppose it matters a great deal what you expect the CPU to do. If
it exists to support data movement between IO ports then it doesn't
need to be very complex. If you want to solve large scientific
problems then, all of a sudden, the CPU is extremely complex with
floating point arithmetic an absolute requirement.

As to RapidiTTy, I see that they are using the GNU Compiler
Collection. Great! However, when it comes time to "Core Swap" how
does GCC suddenly know how to generate code for the new core? I
wouldn't think it is all that easy to retarget GCC (and its' friends).
My guess is that retargeting is more work than developing the CPU.

Richard



(You need to be a member of lpc2000 -- send a blank email to lpc2000-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )

Hi Leonard,

You are right that the tools we supply will not help you port the
LPC2294 functionality to a FPGA. Instead they convert the output of
the Xilinx FPGA design tools & provide a convenient means for
downloading the design to the FPGA.

I'm interested why you want to move to FPGA - I presume you have some
real-time requirement in your application that the LPC2294 can't
handle ? It sure is nice to have the flexibility to implement parts
of your application in programmable hardware rather than trying to
squeeze every clock cycle from your CPU :)

ARM have produced a core which is designed specifically for FPGA &
may be of interest to you. Take a look at http://www.arm.com/products/
CPUs/ARM_Cortex-M1.html

Regards
Dave

--- In l...@yahoogroups.com, "Leonard Rohnert"
wrote:
>
> I've been asked to find the costs of swapping one of our LPC2294
prototypes
> onto FPGA. If the move gets the OK, this is going to be a complete
SoC
> design (with a soft core). I've done various ARM7 (and PIC)
designs but
> this will be my first FPGA project.
>
> In the archives for this group there is some discussion about some
free
> tools from pdqlogic http://www.pdqlogic.com/index.html. This
company has a
> neat board but I don't think the tools will help do the porting I
need to
> do (could be wrong?).
>
> I couldn't find anything else in this archive : - surely someone
else has
> done this?
>
> I've googled RapidiTTy (www.tte-systems.com). This seems to work
with xilinx
> FPGAs (only?), and comes with some kind of MIPS core in the
package. The
> www site says you can swap code between ARM and FPGA. If you've
tried this
> stuff, I'd appreciate any feedback (and costs - I couldn't get
prices on
> the tte site, and their sales guys don't seem to reply to mail on
> Sundays...).
>
> Thanks
> LenRt.
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>



(You need to be a member of lpc2000 -- send a blank email to lpc2000-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )

Hi Leonard,

1. you could look at the Altera NIOSII board. I am told they are good
although i have never tried them.

2. I did use this: MANIK 32 Bit on Xilinx available free from
http://www.niktech.com/index.htm.

I fully agree with Leon Heller,in fact i feel, you will spend more
time implementing a CPU soft core on FPGA than using a uP IC like LPC
or TMS470.

regards
ananth

--- In l...@yahoogroups.com, "Leonard Rohnert" wrote:
>
> I've been asked to find the costs of swapping one of our LPC2294
prototypes
> onto FPGA. If the move gets the OK, this is going to be a complete SoC
> design (with a soft core). I've done various ARM7 (and PIC)
designs but
> this will be my first FPGA project.
>
> In the archives for this group there is some discussion about some free
> tools from pdqlogic http://www.pdqlogic.com/index.html. This
company has a
> neat board but I don't think the tools will help do the porting I
need to
> do (could be wrong?).
>
> I couldn't find anything else in this archive : - surely someone
else has
> done this?
>
> I've googled RapidiTTy (www.tte-systems.com). This seems to work
with xilinx
> FPGAs (only?), and comes with some kind of MIPS core in the package.
The
> www site says you can swap code between ARM and FPGA. If you've
tried this
> stuff, I'd appreciate any feedback (and costs - I couldn't get prices on
> the tte site, and their sales guys don't seem to reply to mail on
> Sundays...).
>
> Thanks
> LenRt.
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>



(You need to be a member of lpc2000 -- send a blank email to lpc2000-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )

Dave (and Leon),

Thanks for the reply.

I'll answer your question (and the one from Leon) as much as I can. Our
customer is looking for flexibility in the design (wants to deal with some
specialzed sensors, and probablly move some functions from SW to HW). The
customer is always right - and prices of FPGAs are getting smaller (we think
we'' get other customers who want to do this in the near future: we think it
is worth spending a bit of my time to get into this).

Apologies to Tom and others if this seems "off topivc" (as I said first
post, we are porting from an LPC design).

regards
LenRt
On 7/2/07, pdqlogic wrote:
>
> Hi Leonard,
>
> You are right that the tools we supply will not help you port the
> LPC2294 functionality to a FPGA. Instead they convert the output of
> the Xilinx FPGA design tools & provide a convenient means for
> downloading the design to the FPGA.
>
> I'm interested why you want to move to FPGA - I presume you have some
> real-time requirement in your application that the LPC2294 can't
> handle ? It sure is nice to have the flexibility to implement parts
> of your application in programmable hardware rather than trying to
> squeeze every clock cycle from your CPU :)
>
> ARM have produced a core which is designed specifically for FPGA &
> may be of interest to you. Take a look at http://www.arm.com/products/
> CPUs/ARM_Cortex-M1.html
>
> Regards
> Dave
>
> --- In l...@yahoogroups.com , "Leonard
> Rohnert"
> wrote:
> >
> > I've been asked to find the costs of swapping one of our LPC2294
> prototypes
> > onto FPGA. If the move gets the OK, this is going to be a complete
> SoC
> > design (with a soft core). I've done various ARM7 (and PIC)
> designs but
> > this will be my first FPGA project.
> >
> > In the archives for this group there is some discussion about some
> free
> > tools from pdqlogic http://www.pdqlogic.com/index.html. This
> company has a
> > neat board but I don't think the tools will help do the porting I
> need to
> > do (could be wrong?).
> >
> > I couldn't find anything else in this archive : - surely someone
> else has
> > done this?
> >
> > I've googled RapidiTTy (www.tte-systems.com). This seems to work
> with xilinx
> > FPGAs (only?), and comes with some kind of MIPS core in the
> package. The
> > www site says you can swap code between ARM and FPGA. If you've
> tried this
> > stuff, I'd appreciate any feedback (and costs - I couldn't get
> prices on
> > the tte site, and their sales guys don't seem to reply to mail on
> > Sundays...).
> >
> > Thanks
> > LenRt.
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


(You need to be a member of lpc2000 -- send a blank email to lpc2000-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )

Hi all,

I have actually used the RapidiTTy toolset for some of my embedded development, so will try to clarify some of the discussions on core swapping.

Basically, RapidiTTy provides 2 softcores (PH and TTE1) which are based on the MIPS architecture. These softcores come with their own header files that allows me to interface the various peripherals like UART and IO pins through my C program. So when I use RapidiTTy to generate a UART example for ARM7 (LPC 2294), I can then convert the project to also work on the softcore (and vice versa). The conversions are limited to the examples that are supported in the tool. I doubt the tool can actually support other cores available in the market.

However, the feature that I found most interesting was that by using the existing JTAG interface and cables, I could program, debug and even obtain timing analysis (execution time and task period) from the code runing on the develpoment board. It saves me the hassle of using LabView to make my measurements. The ARM debugging interface on RapidiTTy is quite straightforward to use and it saves me the hassle of trying to set up Open OCD, GDB etc.

Leonard, it might be worth trying out the 30-day evaluation version of RapidiTTy (http://www.tte-systems.com/downloads.php) to see if this tool would fit your needs. Its free :-)

Leonard Rohnert wrote:
Dave (and Leon),

Thanks for the reply.

I'll answer your question (and the one from Leon) as much as I can. Our
customer is looking for flexibility in the design (wants to deal with some
specialzed sensors, and probablly move some functions from SW to HW). The
customer is always right - and prices of FPGAs are getting smaller (we think
we'' get other customers who want to do this in the near future: we think it
is worth spending a bit of my time to get into this).

Apologies to Tom and others if this seems "off topivc" (as I said first
post, we are porting from an LPC design).

regards
LenRt

On 7/2/07, pdqlogic wrote:
>
> Hi Leonard,
>
> You are right that the tools we supply will not help you port the
> LPC2294 functionality to a FPGA. Instead they convert the output of
> the Xilinx FPGA design tools & provide a convenient means for
> downloading the design to the FPGA.
>
> I'm interested why you want to move to FPGA - I presume you have some
> real-time requirement in your application that the LPC2294 can't
> handle ? It sure is nice to have the flexibility to implement parts
> of your application in programmable hardware rather than trying to
> squeeze every clock cycle from your CPU :)
>
> ARM have produced a core which is designed specifically for FPGA &
> may be of interest to you. Take a look at http://www.arm.com/products/
> CPUs/ARM_Cortex-M1.html
>
> Regards
> Dave
>
> --- In l...@yahoogroups.com , "Leonard
> Rohnert"
> wrote:
> >
> > I've been asked to find the costs of swapping one of our LPC2294
> prototypes
> > onto FPGA. If the move gets the OK, this is going to be a complete
> SoC
> > design (with a soft core). I've done various ARM7 (and PIC)
> designs but
> > this will be my first FPGA project.
> >
> > In the archives for this group there is some discussion about some
> free
> > tools from pdqlogic http://www.pdqlogic.com/index.html. This
> company has a
> > neat board but I don't think the tools will help do the porting I
> need to
> > do (could be wrong?).
> >
> > I couldn't find anything else in this archive : - surely someone
> else has
> > done this?
> >
> > I've googled RapidiTTy (www.tte-systems.com). This seems to work
> with xilinx
> > FPGAs (only?), and comes with some kind of MIPS core in the
> package. The
> > www site says you can swap code between ARM and FPGA. If you've
> tried this
> > stuff, I'd appreciate any feedback (and costs - I couldn't get
> prices on
> > the tte site, and their sales guys don't seem to reply to mail on
> > Sundays...).
> >
> > Thanks
> > LenRt.
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

---------------------------------
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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


(You need to be a member of lpc2000 -- send a blank email to lpc2000-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )

hello,

atmel has both the arm7 and cortex cores for its
flash based fpga. the licence for the core does not
add to the cost of the part.

bob engle
embedded solutions
Leonard Rohnert wrote:

> Dave (and Leon),
>
> Thanks for the reply.
>
> I'll answer your question (and the one from Leon) as much as I can. Our
> customer is looking for flexibility in the design (wants to deal with some
> specialzed sensors, and probablly move some functions from SW to HW). The
> customer is always right - and prices of FPGAs are getting smaller (we
> think
> we'' get other customers who want to do this in the near future: we
> think it
> is worth spending a bit of my time to get into this).
>
> Apologies to Tom and others if this seems "off topivc" (as I said first
> post, we are porting from an LPC design).
>
> regards
> LenRt
>
> On 7/2/07, pdqlogic > > wrote:
> >
> > Hi Leonard,
> >
> > You are right that the tools we supply will not help you port the
> > LPC2294 functionality to a FPGA. Instead they convert the output of
> > the Xilinx FPGA design tools & provide a convenient means for
> > downloading the design to the FPGA.
> >
> > I'm interested why you want to move to FPGA - I presume you have some
> > real-time requirement in your application that the LPC2294 can't
> > handle ? It sure is nice to have the flexibility to implement parts
> > of your application in programmable hardware rather than trying to
> > squeeze every clock cycle from your CPU :)
> >
> > ARM have produced a core which is designed specifically for FPGA &
> > may be of interest to you. Take a look at
> http://www.arm.com/products/
> > CPUs/ARM_Cortex-M1.html
> >
> > Regards
> > Dave
> >
> > --- In l...@yahoogroups.com
> , "Leonard
> > Rohnert"
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > I've been asked to find the costs of swapping one of our LPC2294
> > prototypes
> > > onto FPGA. If the move gets the OK, this is going to be a complete
> > SoC
> > > design (with a soft core). I've done various ARM7 (and PIC)
> > designs but
> > > this will be my first FPGA project.
> > >
> > > In the archives for this group there is some discussion about some
> > free
> > > tools from pdqlogic http://www.pdqlogic.com/index.html.
> This
> > company has a
> > > neat board but I don't think the tools will help do the porting I
> > need to
> > > do (could be wrong?).
> > >
> > > I couldn't find anything else in this archive : - surely someone
> > else has
> > > done this?
> > >
> > > I've googled RapidiTTy (www.tte-systems.com). This seems to work
> > with xilinx
> > > FPGAs (only?), and comes with some kind of MIPS core in the
> > package. The
> > > www site says you can swap code between ARM and FPGA. If you've
> > tried this
> > > stuff, I'd appreciate any feedback (and costs - I couldn't get
> > prices on
> > > the tte site, and their sales guys don't seem to reply to mail on
> > > Sundays...).
> > >
> > > Thanks
> > > LenRt.
> > >
> > >
> > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> > >
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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hello,

OOPS
that is actel

bob engle
embedded solutions
Leonard Rohnert wrote:

> Dave (and Leon),
>
> Thanks for the reply.
>
> I'll answer your question (and the one from Leon) as much as I can. Our
> customer is looking for flexibility in the design (wants to deal with some
> specialzed sensors, and probablly move some functions from SW to HW). The
> customer is always right - and prices of FPGAs are getting smaller (we
> think
> we'' get other customers who want to do this in the near future: we
> think it
> is worth spending a bit of my time to get into this).
>
> Apologies to Tom and others if this seems "off topivc" (as I said first
> post, we are porting from an LPC design).
>
> regards
> LenRt
>
> On 7/2/07, pdqlogic > > wrote:
> >
> > Hi Leonard,
> >
> > You are right that the tools we supply will not help you port the
> > LPC2294 functionality to a FPGA. Instead they convert the output of
> > the Xilinx FPGA design tools & provide a convenient means for
> > downloading the design to the FPGA.
> >
> > I'm interested why you want to move to FPGA - I presume you have some
> > real-time requirement in your application that the LPC2294 can't
> > handle ? It sure is nice to have the flexibility to implement parts
> > of your application in programmable hardware rather than trying to
> > squeeze every clock cycle from your CPU :)
> >
> > ARM have produced a core which is designed specifically for FPGA &
> > may be of interest to you. Take a look at
> http://www.arm.com/products/
> > CPUs/ARM_Cortex-M1.html
> >
> > Regards
> > Dave
> >
> > --- In l...@yahoogroups.com
> , "Leonard
> > Rohnert"
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > I've been asked to find the costs of swapping one of our LPC2294
> > prototypes
> > > onto FPGA. If the move gets the OK, this is going to be a complete
> > SoC
> > > design (with a soft core). I've done various ARM7 (and PIC)
> > designs but
> > > this will be my first FPGA project.
> > >
> > > In the archives for this group there is some discussion about some
> > free
> > > tools from pdqlogic http://www.pdqlogic.com/index.html.
> This
> > company has a
> > > neat board but I don't think the tools will help do the porting I
> > need to
> > > do (could be wrong?).
> > >
> > > I couldn't find anything else in this archive : - surely someone
> > else has
> > > done this?
> > >
> > > I've googled RapidiTTy (www.tte-systems.com). This seems to work
> > with xilinx
> > > FPGAs (only?), and comes with some kind of MIPS core in the
> > package. The
> > > www site says you can swap code between ARM and FPGA. If you've
> > tried this
> > > stuff, I'd appreciate any feedback (and costs - I couldn't get
> > prices on
> > > the tte site, and their sales guys don't seem to reply to mail on
> > > Sundays...).
> > >
> > > Thanks
> > > LenRt.
> > >
> > >
> > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> > >
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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--- In l...@yahoogroups.com, bob engle wrote:
>
> hello,
>
> OOPS
> that is actel
>
> bob engle
> embedded solutions
>
...

Yes, if you either have an investment in high level ARM7 code related
to this product, or are especially comfortable with the ARM
architecture, you should have a look at Actel's Core M7 (I believe...)
series of chips. They allow you to build on that architecture yet
leave you room to drop in other cores for peripherals as needed. They
come in a range of sizes, and I think that the cost of the ARM core is
included in the chip price, so no separate IP licensing is required.
Like everybody else, most of the major tools are 'free' to use up to
10^6 gates.

As I am most familiar with ARM cpu's but would like to learn more
about FPGA design, this is a route that has appealed to me for
some time now. I'm of the school that believes that this will be a
critical skill set in the near future.

Other issues related to incorporating FPGA's into a design don't go
away, though. Power consumption, time to market in an unfamiliar
environment, design validation issues, etc. I believe the risk on a
project is likely to increase greatly.

Designing this kind of logic scares me a bit. As someone else said,
integrating the peripherals is likely to be the hard part. In the
world I am used to just getting known good silicon to work is often
challenge enough, let alone coding them too. It is a really different
mindset. After all of these years, I find the notion of working out
timing in an environment with *true* concurrency intimidating.

-- Dave


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> Designing this kind of logic scares me a bit. As someone else said,
> integrating the peripherals is likely to be the hard part. In the
> world I am used to just getting known good silicon to work is often
> challenge enough, let alone coding them too. It is a really different
> mindset. After all of these years, I find the notion of working out
> timing in an environment with *true* concurrency intimidating.
>
> -- Dave
>

It's odd that you should bring up concurrency. I find that to be the
most fascinating part of FPGAs. You create a bunch of finite state
machines that are interlocked through semaphores and the machines all
run in parallel.

FPGAs are a trip!

Richard



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I went through this months ago. Using softcore CPUs in FPGAs is becoming very common. After looking at the various options, I went with the Altera system. You are correct that connecting all of the perfs you need to run can be the time consuming debugging part. That is why it is very important to pick a system that has as many of these sub soft components already built and tested within their system.

I have used several ARM MCUs for designs, but not really interested in using that inside a FPGA. A softcore MCU needs to be optimized for FPGA synthesis. ARM was created for custom silicon compiling. Not at all the same thing. If you don't care whether your FPGA uses 40,000 cells or 20,000 cells it may not matter to you, but whether the part costs $15 or $30 usually matters to me. I generally have to pick a softcore CPU that fits the needs at hand. It may be as small as 800 logic cells, or as big as 8000. All depends on what you need, but don't forget FPGA cells are not free.

There are tiny 8 bit softcore CPUs like Picoblaze, Pacoblaze, NIOS-I, i8080. Then you have larger 32 bit CPUs such as NIOS-II in Altera. It has a ton of pre built perfs such as running DDR mem, etc. The Megacore functions of Altera provide a wide array of functionality with little debugging. Very good DSP compilers as well.

It is not that difficult using softcore CPUs in FPGAs. However it becomes more of an optimization issue. You don't want to waste the FPGA cells on a 32 bit CPU if a tiny 8 bit CPU will do the job. The smaller the logic cell requirement, the cheaper the FPGA.

Chris.
._,___

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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----- Original Message -----
From: "rtstofer"
To:
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 6:02 AM
Subject: [lpc2000] Re: Tools to help port from LPC2294 to FPGA??
>> Designing this kind of logic scares me a bit. As someone else said,
>> integrating the peripherals is likely to be the hard part. In the
>> world I am used to just getting known good silicon to work is often
>> challenge enough, let alone coding them too. It is a really different
>> mindset. After all of these years, I find the notion of working out
>> timing in an environment with *true* concurrency intimidating.
>>
>> -- Dave
>> It's odd that you should bring up concurrency. I find that to be the
> most fascinating part of FPGAs. You create a bunch of finite state
> machines that are interlocked through semaphores and the machines all
> run in parallel.

Parallelism is quite natural in hardware.

Leon


(You need to be a member of lpc2000 -- send a blank email to lpc2000-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )

> > It's odd that you should bring up concurrency. I find that to be the
> > most fascinating part of FPGAs. You create a bunch of finite state
> > machines that are interlocked through semaphores and the machines all
> > run in parallel.
>
> Parallelism is quite natural in hardware.
>
> Leon
>

Sure but the part I found interesting is that sequential reading code
isn't sequential when under a clock:

Assume A = 3

Under a clock the statements

A = A + 1;
B = A;

results in a pipeline and after the clock A is equal to 4 (no surprise
here) but B is equal to 3, the previous value of A, not the current value.

The whole idea of reading code from top to bottom and the implied
sequence having something to do with execution sequence is right out
the window!

I really enjoy designing things with FPGAs. Even debugging is more
challenging.

Richard



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