A soft microprocessor (also called softcore microprocessor or a soft processor) is a
microprocessor
A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...
core that can be wholly implemented using
logic synthesis. It can be implemented via different
semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical resistivity and conductivity, electrical conductivity value falling between that of a electrical conductor, conductor, such as copper, and an insulator (electricity), insulator, such as glas ...
devices containing programmable logic (e.g.,
ASIC
An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-efficien ...
,
FPGA
A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware de ...
,
CPLD), including both high-end and commodity variations.
Most systems, if they use a soft processor at all, only use a single soft processor. However, a few designers tile as many soft cores onto an FPGA as will fit. In those
multi-core
A multi-core processor is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit with two or more separate processing units, called cores, each of which reads and executes program instructions. The instructions are ordinary CPU instructions (such a ...
systems, rarely used resources can be shared between all the cores in a cluster.
While many people put exactly one soft microprocessor on a FPGA, a sufficiently large FPGA can hold two or more soft microprocessors, resulting in a
multi-core processor
A multi-core processor is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit with two or more separate processing units, called cores, each of which reads and executes program instructions. The instructions are ordinary CPU instructions (such a ...
. The number of soft processors on a single FPGA is limited only by the size of the FPGA. Some people have put dozens or hundreds of soft microprocessors on a single FPGA. This is one way to implement
massive parallelism in computing and can likewise be applied to
in-memory computing.
A soft microprocessor and its surrounding peripherals implemented in a FPGA is less vulnerable to obsolescence than a discrete processor.
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Core comparison
See also
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System-on-a-chip (SoC)
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Network-on-a-chip
A network on a chip or network-on-chip (NoC or )This article uses the convention that "NoC" is pronounced . Therefore, it uses the convention "a" for the indefinite article corresponding to NoC ("a NoC"). Other sources may pronounce it as an ...
(NoC)
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Reconfigurable computing
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Field-programmable gate array
A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware d ...
(FPGA)
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VHDL
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Verilog
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SystemVerilog
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Hardware acceleration
Hardware acceleration is the use of computer hardware designed to perform specific functions more efficiently when compared to software running on a general-purpose central processing unit (CPU). Any transformation of data that can be calcula ...
References
External links
Soft CPU Cores for FPGAFPGA CPU NewsFreedom CPU websiteMicroprocessor coreson Opencores.org (Expand the "Processor" tab)
NikTech32 bit RISC Microprocessor MANIK.
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