Product category:
Intellectual Property Cores
News Release from: Xilinx
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 12 August 2004
Embedded soft processors top CMP poll
Independent survey results indicate that the Xilinx suite of embedded soft processors form the solution of choice for FPGA designs.
Independent survey results indicate that the Xilinx suite of embedded soft processors form the solution of choice for FPGA designs Xilinx placed first overall in FPGA solutions with 25% of the respondents indicating that they have purchased or used Xilinx architectures in the last 12 months and ranked in the top ten among chip architecture vendors
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 18 Apr 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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Approximately 50% of the respondents who use hard or soft processors will consider using Xilinx solutions in the next 12 months.
The 2004 "Embedded market study" sponsored by CMP Media reflects a total of 2044 respondents and covers an exhaustive list of embedded processors.
The web-based questionnaire was developed jointly by CMP Media (Embedded Systems Programming, Electronic Engineering Times, Embedded Systems Conferences, Embedded Systems Europe and Dr Dobb's Journal) and Wilson Research Group.
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"The acknowledgment and adoption of our soft and hard RISC cores is a testament to the vast array of applications in the embedded processing arena that we cover", said Rich Sevcik, Executive Vice President at Xilinx.
"The combination of our familiar MicroBlaze and PicoBlaze cores, coupled with a complete development environment, has enabled our soft processor solutions to gain the leadership position in FPGA embedded processing".
Competing with non-FPGA vendors, Xilinx placed in the top ten with its chip architectures ranking just behind Intel, Motorola and others.
When polled on potential consideration over the next 12 months, Xilinx again placed first among FPGA vendors and in the top ten of all chip architecture vendors with over one third of the respondents considering Xilinx solutions.
In the FPGA hard processing category, Xilinx offers the 32bit PowerPC CPU immersed in the Virtex-II Pro FPGAs.
For embedded FPGA designs, respondents that have used the hard PowerPC core in the last 12 months came in at 24.7%.
When asked whether considering use of the hard PowerPC in the next 12 months, the response doubled with 49.8% indicating that they would consider using PowerPC in their FPGA design.
For 32bit soft processing requirements, almost 4% of the respondents indicated that they have purchased or used the Xilinx MicroBlaze core in the last 12 months.
When polled on potential consideration over the next 12 months, considered use almost triples to about 10%.
For the 8bit category, 2.7% of the respondents identified the PicoBlaze core as being used over the last 12 months with over 10% considering it in the next 12 months.
The Xilinx range of processor solutions and silicon enables embedded system designers to select the optimum performance and price points for their embedded processing needs.
Offering the highest processor performance in any FPGA device, the industry standard PowerPC 32bit core is immersed (hard) in the Virtex-II Pro family of FPGAs.
The Xilinx MicroBlaze 32bit soft core is a configurable, general-purpose RISC processor that can be used with both the Spartan and Virtex families of FPGAs depending on cost and performance requirements.
Targeting the most cost-effective applications is the Xilinx PicoBlaze 8bit microcontroller that can be used with the FPGA family as well as with Xilinx CoolRunner CPLDs.
To rapidly configure embedded processor solutions, Xilinx provides a common, fully integrated hardware and software development environment with the Platform Studio IDE.
The Platform Studio environment enables both hardware and software designers to develop platforms targeting PowerPC hard processors or Xilinx MicroBlaze soft processor cores using a single design environment.
The common design environment, bus structure and peripherals allow designers to easily select the best processor and peripherals for their application needs without extensive engineering rework or additional learning curve.
The complete system environment provides an extensive library of peripherals (intellectual property cores), reference designs, development boards, internal and third party tools, and the most widely used operating systems.
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