FPGA Softcore implementation

[Sigma|Six]

fpga softcore

Hi Guys,

Recently I am studying NIOS II processor, yes it's a softcore.

I find that using a softcore is not easy at all for a lone ranger developer as you need to take care of the system library (Hardware Abstraction Layer) which corelate directly to the HW design.

Then you have to implement your application codes for the softcore itself for your end product whatever it is.

So, I would like to invite who ever used a softcore before to share their experiences and advises. Nomatter you used a microBlaze before or a Nios I/II.

Please advise what are the true benefits that can justify for a softcore implementation? How does it benefits developer/company from using a simple 8051 IC? Please projects a true examples.

What are the precautions and hacks that a developer should aware of?

Did anyone really implement a authentic design using NIOS II before or everything just leverage from the samples with improvement and customizations?
I need some confidence to proceed. Any comments are wellcome.

-Sigma|Six

 

[yasser_shoukry]

I was involved in a project in which we are designing a bit level testing tool. In this project we tried many softcores processors (Microblaze, Picoblaze, PopCorn,....).

The main advantage of using an a Soft Core Processor upon using a simple 8051 IC is that you can interface a lot of peripherals on the processor bus (memory mapped) instead of using some paralle ports to do that. This will lead to increase the performance significantly as these peripherals will be part of your computer system.

The other major difference in using a SoC (System On Chip) is the flexibility of adding/modifying some modules so that you can add some hardware functionalities on bit level you will never can do using a MCU (MicroController Unit)

Good Luck