A soft microprocessor (also called softcore microprocessor or a soft processor) is a microprocessor core that can be wholly implemented using logic synthesis. It can be implemented via different semiconductor devices containing programmable logic (e.g., ASIC, FPGA, CPLD), including both high-end and commodity variations.
Most systems, if they use a soft processor at all, only use a single soft processor. However, a few designers tile as many soft cores onto an FPGA as will fit. In those multi-core systems, rarely used resources can be shared between all the cores in a cluster.
While many people put exactly one soft microprocessor on a FPGA, a sufficiently large FPGA can hold two or more soft microprocessors, resulting in a multi-core processor. The number of soft processors on a single FPGA is limited only by the size of the FPGA. Some people have put dozens or hundreds of soft microprocessors on a single FPGA.
A soft microprocessor and its surrounding peripherals implemented in a FPGA is less vulnerable to obsolescence than a discrete processor.
Video Soft microprocessor
Core comparison
Maps Soft microprocessor
See also
- SoC (System-on-a-chip)
- FPGA (Field-programmable gate array)
- Reconfigurable computing
- VHDL
- Verilog
References
External links
- Soft CPU Cores for FPGA
- Detailed Comparison of 12 Soft Microprocessors
- FPGA CPU News
- Freedom CPU website
- Microprocessor cores on Opencores.org (Expand the "Processor" tab)
- NikTech 32 bit RISC Microprocessor MANIK.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments