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Altera_Forum
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10 years ago

NIOSII x ARM Cortex-M1 [ benchmark ]

I was a little curious to know how much performance a core synthesized at an FPGA chip could achieve if compared to a commercial off the shelf core designed directly on ASIC, but I got surprised to s...
Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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10 years ago

Although not specifically mentioned on the page, the ARM Cortex M1 was specifically targeted for FPGA's and the speeds they state are in line with the FPGA performance:

http://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-m/cortex-m1.php

The MIPS/MHz at the same process node is a question. At a 65 NM node you can probably run an M1 hardcore much faster than the 200 MHz listed. But at the same time you can run the M1 in a Cyclone III device at 100 MHz, which will be much better than an M0 or M0+ running at 50 MHz which is probably on a 130 nm process.

NIOS has process features that cover the range, and is a trade off of size vs performance, but is a decent processor.

That being said however, you will pay more for a soft core NIOS if it' bumps your FPGA size up that just adding an external CPU.

The SOC chips are really nice if they fit your need, but if you are looking at a M0, the dual A9's are overkill and probably bump you into a much bigger FPGA as well.

Pete