Xilinx Kindles Soft Processor Fire
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By P. J. Connolly
December 15, 2007 —
Xilinx was on fire in November, launching the latest version of its MicroBlaze 32-bit software-based processor and a new FPGA-based accelerator for the Intel Front Side Bus, as well as updated versions of the company’s developer tools.
MicroBlaze 7 features a new memory management unit that the company claims is the industry’s first configurable MMU to enable commercial-grade operating system support. Xilinx intends the new MMU to support both of its FPGA lines: the low-cost, volume-oriented Spartan on the one hand, and the high-performance Virtex family on the other.
“Microprocessing is moving into FPGAs” to meet the requirements for “soft” processors, explained Xilinx senior product manager Jay Gould. “There are certain kinds of performance advantages and other flexibility advantages to moving the processing into the FPGA. We offer a lot of other options to improving processing rather than just adding another processor chip on your board, or clocking the core faster,” he added, because those fall victim to diminishing returns.
LynuxWorks was the first embedded Linux provider to jump on board with Xilinx, releasing a MicroBlaze platform version of its Blue Cat Linux the same day, Nov. 14. LynuxWorks vice president of marketing Robert Day noted, “What we’re really trying to do is offer software developers a natural, comfortable platform to develop their applications on, even though it’s running on a configurable hardware platform.”
The new MicroBlaze processor also features new floating-point unit instructions intended to boost FPU performance, and an updated interconnect with the CoreConnect processor local bus (PLB) that allows the scaling of interfaces from 32-bit to 128-bit designs. The PLB also allows developers to connect with memory controllers in point-to-point or shared topologies, and supports full-duplex DMA engines.
The Xilinx Platform Studio was also updated, with new features in the Base System Builder wizard to support the multiport memory controller, and a new clocking wizard. The Eclipse-based SDK now offers support for remote debug and Xilkernel support, allowing developers to use memory protection on MicroBlaze processors. XPS 9.2 runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Solaris 9, and Windows XP; it is included as part of the company’s Embedded Development Kit, which also offers documentation and reference designs along with the MicroBlaze processor and other tools. EDK 9.2 is available now for US$495.
Meanwhile, the company also announced its first FSB accelerator designed for the Intel Xeon 7300 series of datacenter servers. The Accelerated Computing Platform (ACP) M1 is based on the company’s Virtex-5 FPGA and uses an Intel-designed abstraction layer to plug into platform-level services.
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