Equally by offering this for Xilinx, it makes them more palatable over Altera offerings (owned by Intel). So a very tactile move on many levels.
But as an end user, I like competition like this, as long as there is competition tomorrow.
But as an end user, I like competition like this, as long as there is competition tomorrow.
ARM is releasing the M1 for Xilinx, Altera, Actel FPGAs. These are firm (i.e. technology mapped) cores adapted for each FPGA family.
Here for example is the documentation for the Altera version. Note that it sports the Altera Avalon bus interface which would not be used in a Xilinx design.
https://developer.arm.com/docs/dui0395/latest/introduction/a...
And here is the announcement/information about the M1 core for Actel/Microsemi FPGAs:
https://soc.microsemi.com/products/ip/search/detail.aspx?id=...
ARM used to sue anyone trying to make an ARM clone and now this. Great news for RISC-V. At least one if not two low end FPGA manufacturers will be shipping a fabric with hard blocks supporting RISC-V.