free soft processor
It's a very good link, unfortunately all they've got is for uCLinux and for Linux. So I'd have to install Linux on my PC in order to just compile programs for my MicroBlaze. I am not very fond of Linux in grneral, so I'll stick to DOS or TRU64 or F......Windows.
Nevertheless thanks for your time to search this link.
By the time, I managed to synthesize and implement my VHDL code for the 3-stage pipelined
MicroBlaze core.
I also have done some basic tests and my clone seems to work perfectly well running at
80MHZ ( no faster crystal
), which gives me slightly less than 80MIPS of
32-bit performance within my Spartan3 FPGA.
It translates to about 240 MegaBytes of data transfered out of the chip or into it every single second
.
At this speed it might be used in some video processing or other real time tasks.
And best of all, I didn't pay a single penny for it.
The original Xilinx core with the EDK stuff costs about $2500.
Quite impressive, isn't it ?
The core is completely binary code compatible with the original MB in version EDK8.1i .
As it is ment to be a microcontroller I got rid of the caches and haven't implemented the FPU.
There are no typical external buses for off chip peripherals, however, the external data RAM support is provided.
Next I'm going to implement some serial I/O, some LCD pannel controller and make a digital scope ( plus some external analog components, of course).
Later I'll try to make something more useful and try to make some money with it, if possible at all
.
When I get the tools to write some useful programs I'll think of making this core available in some limited version ( like without interrupts and exceptions ) to broader audience who might be interested in FPGA/MB stuff.
Regards, yego