OpenCores is a free-software organization for hardware designs.
Below is a list from http://www.opencores.org/browse.cgi/by_category
--- it lists all the designs they have online now. Briefly it
includes 16 arithmetic cores (including three variants of the FFT,
three multipliers, and a single-cycle unsigned divider), 11 prototype
boards, 31 communication controllers (covering serial, USB, Ethernet,
GPIO, HDLC, I2C, SPI, CAN, SPDIF, and a bunch of others), 11 crypto
cores (including RSA, DES, 3DES, AES128/192, Twofish), a DDR SDRAM
controller, 30 processors (at least one of which, the OpenRISC 1000,
runs Linux --- also including implementations of AVR and Z80), JPEG
compression, JTAG, a PS/2 interface, 11 systems-on-a-chip, a PCI
bridge, an IDE controller, and a VGA/LCD controller.
I think Axis also ships all the FPGA stuff from their cameras as free
software as well.
One implication of all this free-software hardware-design stuff is
that the relative advantage of including some FPGA space in a
general-purpose computer is gradually increasing. If you could
transform your FPU into a fast integer FFT unit for one application,
and then a crypto core for another, and then JPEG compression for a
third, you might be better off than just having an FPU --- even at the
cost of making the FPU larger and slower.
For the most part, I think putting the CPU designs into an FPGA is a
silly thing to do. Maybe an ASIC, but not an FPGA. They use so much
FPGA space, and they run fairly slowly; you're much better off using a
purpose-built CPU to load stuff into the FPGA and run stuff that you
can't yet effectively accelerate with the FPGA.
(Perhaps some systems will trade CPU power for FPGA space --- perhaps
use an AVR or an RCA 1801 (that was the bit-serial processor all the
space missions and the COSMAC ELF used, wasn't it?) for the CPU to
control the FPGA, and run anything that needs to be fast in the FPGA.)
There's a virtuous cycle there similar to (and actually synergistic
with) the virtuous cycle I've been talking about for the last year
with multicore CPUs. If FPGAs become more widely available in PCs,
people will write more software (is that the right word?) for them,
which will give more relative advantage to PCs incorporating FPGAs.
However, for the foreseeable future (four years?), the FPGAs will
still cost US$10 or more, so they won't find their way into low-end
cellphones and other small programmable computers.
For the "glue logic" stuff like USB and Ethernet, the advantage may
not be that great; I think you'll cause some communications problems
if you can turn your USB controller into an AES core for a while, then
turn it back; and the ability to turn it into an Ethernet controller
for a while, and then back into USB, isn't really helpful without both
connectors already present. (And I think the Ethernet PHY needs funny
voltages and waveforms anyway, so you need specialized analog
circuitry.)
Here's the list:
Arithmetic core
CORDIC core
5x4Gbps CRC generator designed with standard cells
Single Clock Unsigned Division Algorithm
Hardware Division Units
radix 4 complex fft
CF Cordic
CF FFT
CF Floating Point Multiplier
Unsigned serial divider
HCSA adder and Generic ALU based on HCSA
PYRAMID Integer Multiplier unit
HIERARCHICAL Integer Multiplier unit
Binary to BCD conversions, with LED display driver
FPU
Discrete Cosine Transform core
True matrix 3x3 color convertion
Prototype board
Micro FPGA Board
OCRP-1 board
ACEX 1K50 board
SD/MMC Bootloader
MAXII-Evalboard
IIE-PCI Board
TI DSP and Xilinx FPGA Dev Board
Ethernet Development Board
Linux & Xilinx FPGA Dev Board
kiss-board
Technologic Systems TS-7300 FPGA Computer
Communication controller
Ethernet MAC 10/100 Mbps
General-Purpose I/O (GPIO) Core
HDLC controller
I2C controller core
IrDA
TDM controller
Serial UART
UART 16550 core
USB 2.0 Function Core
Stepper Motor Controller
I2S Interface
SPI controller core
Reverse CDMA Access Channel Controller
CAN Protocol Controller
USB 1.1 PHY
Simple Asynchronous Serial Controller
Automatic BAUD rate generator
Single Slot PCM Interface
USB 1.1 Function IP Core
SPI core
HDB3/B3ZS Encoder+Decoder
TIME SLOT INTERCHANGE DIGITAL SWITCH
Quadrature Decoder / Counter
SPDIF Interface
SystemC USB1.1 IP Core
USB 1.1 Host and Function IP core
Manchester to UART converter
SD/MMC Bootloader
10_100_1000 Mbps tri-mode ethernet MAC
a VHDL 16550 UART core
8b10b Encoder/Decoder
Coprocessor
Floating Point Unit
CF Reconfigurable Computing Array
FPU
Crypto core
DES/Triple DES IP Cores
128/192 AES
SystemC/Verilog DES
AES (Rijndael) IP Core
Basic RSA Encryption Engine
Basic DES Crypto Core
SystemC/Verilog MD5
AES128
XTEA Crypto Core
twofish 128/192/256
AES core modules
DSP core
Biquad IIR Filter Core
Low Power FIR Filter
CF FIR Filter
FirGen/MultGen
ECC core
Reed Solomon Encoder
CF LDPC Decoder
Ultimate CRC
Reed-Solomon Decoder (31, 19, 6)
Library
Random Number Generator Library
gh vhdl library
extension_pack
Memory core
Parameterisable DRAM model
Memory cores
Memory sizer
Generic FIFOs
DDR SDRAM Controller Core
Single Port ASRAM
CF Interleaver
Microprocessor
Mini-Risc core
Plasma - most MIPS I(TM) opcodes
OpenRISC 1000
aeMB
Yellow Star
RISC5x
RISC Microcontroller
T80 cpu
T51 mcu
risc16f84
AX8 mcu
PPX16 mcu
TV80
AVR Core
ASPIDA sync/async DLX Core
CF State Space Processor
System09
Aquarius
AE18
Cpu Generator
System68
16 Bit Microcontroller
Data Flow Processor
JOP: a Java Optimized Processor
Wishbone High Performance Z80
miniMIPS
Educational RISC Processor
YACC-Yet Another CPU CPU
UCore
T400 µController
Other
SoC Debug Interface
JTAG Test Access Port (TAP)
PS2 interface
PWM/Timer/Counter (PTC) Core
boundaries
SystemC/Verilog Random Number Generator
Simple Programmable Interrupt Controller
Simple General Purpose IO
WB Interface for TI 5x DSP (WB2HPI)
DragonBall/68K Wishbone interface
Keypad Scanner
First File Reader FAT16
OpenRisc 1200 Graphic Configuration Tool
SystemC to Verilog Synthesizable Subset Translator
FPGA MMC-Card Config.
JPEG Hardware Compressor
Simple FM Receiver
keyboardcontroller
xmatchpro lossless data compressor
Hardware looping unit
SoC
WISHBONE DMA/Bridge IP Core
WISHBONE Conmax IP Core
WISHBONE Conbus IP Core
Wishbone System6800/01
Complete SoC based on C-NIT processor
System09
WISHBONE Builder
WB/OPB & OPB/WB Interface Wrapper
ahb system generator
SimpCon - a Simple SoC Interconnect
kiss-board
System controller
AC 97 Controller IP Core
OCIDEC (OpenCores IDE Controller)
Memory Controller IP Core
PCI bridge
RS232 system controller
TI DSP and Xilinx FPGA Dev Board
Video controller
VGA/LCD Controller
Video compression systems
