Re: Advice for manager: should I pick Tensilica 212GP or ARM
foxabilo, your feedback has been most helpful, thank you.
As I said earlier, our customer wants technical advice on an communications ASIC. They narrowed down their selection between two synthesizeable IP-cores: the Tensilica 212GP and the ARM92x. The MCUs would be 'embedded' on the ASIC (i.e., not a separate off-the-shelf standard product IC.)
As you can tell, none of us has any real clue on choosing the CPU. They contracted an independent company to review the two CPUs, in terms of how well tehy can perform the protocol-translation task (mostly USB2 <-> 802.11n, but some other stuff too.) Anyway, I read that review; it covered the (expected) MIPs of each CPU, die-area, power-consumption. All in all, it seemed like a good technical overview, and it concluded the 212GP was slightly better (due to higher expected performance.)
I know the ARM is more popular than the Tensilica -- but I don't have enough experience to contradict the original review's conclusion. the review was written by people more experienced than me. But I do appreciate a 'second opinion' on the matter! For example, the review didn't cover ease of development or tool-flow at all. I think these are important, too, since the firmware development is just as important as hardware.[/b]