I would just use a PIC, AVR, or ARM even if I had to use more than one with some discrete logic on the side but I like solder, assembly, and low level coding in that order. If I find a small, cheap, easy to use, and general purpose FPGA, I may look into that as well.
MIPS may be a special case for implementation. The original Loongson design (Chinese) lacked 4 instructions that MIPS still had IP protection on. On Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:45:56 +0100, Magnus Danielson <[email protected]> wrote: >A short notice on embedded CPU/MPUs into FPGAs. Using PIC or AVR might >be tempting, but I consider any clone "dirty" from a rights perspective, >MIPS for instance have been very protective on their side, so has ARM. >So far has the SPARC been the only big one being accepted in their >LEON-x variants that I know of. We be sad to see the cotton industry >level being smashed by the big firm lawyers. > >So, either using the OpenRISC variants or similar. There is loads of >CPUs on the OpenCores website, but just because they are there do not >think they are free to use if they are clones of commercial stuff. > >I would either use one of the FPGA vendors CPUs and then write the core >in C, or use a free CPU. > >I could also roll my own CPU, as I have already done before, but >building a tool-chain including GCC is a bit of home-work. For my >application I haven't bothered, but it is tempting to get C capabilities. > >Then again, if someone could show that the PIC and/or AVR is free to >clone in FGPA, by showing a clear statement from the respective >technology holders, then that would be a way forward. > >I've done this analysis before, and so far I have not seen any >comprehensive open analysis covering these aspects. > >I fear that this is way off topic for this list, so I propose that this >aspects is continued on another list, such as the FPGA-Synth list, which >faces essentially the same problems. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
