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ARM releases free Cortex-M processor cores for FPGAs

abopen.com

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Re: ARM releases free Cortex-M processor cores for FPGAs

#71

Post by ksec »

jamiek88 wrote: post #41
steve19 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand is does it really cost a company like WD that much to license or just buy already manufactured chips? It would seem taking risks on new architectures, and all the extra development time (both chip and tooling) would far outweigh the cost of just licensing arm. Can someone explain the economics of it all? Don't get me wrong, I am all for a free competitor to ARM's near monopoly on the mobile em…

Well WD has total sales of $15.13bn with a cost of goods of $10.8bn if the chip and license for arm costs $3 and they can get the costs to $1 with the chip doing exactly and only what they need at that scale it’s a meaningful impact on cost of goods thus bottom line.

they are less than 0.3, not 3.

Re: ARM releases free Cortex-M processor cores for FPGAs

#72

Post by fooker »

mycall wrote: post #68
stcredzero wrote: post #44

How suitable is RISC-V for military use? If we were to redesign the F-16 from scratch in 2018, would be able to make it using hardened Arm or RISC-V chips in place of x86 processors?

I wouldn't assume the F-16s have Von Neumann.

Do you have a source for this?

Re: ARM releases free Cortex-M processor cores for FPGAs

#73

Post by rataata_jr »

zekevermillion wrote: post #62
paulgerhardt wrote: post #14

The press release linked by OP doesn't give the full story. For a better perspective see https://abopen.com/news/arm-offers-free-as-in-beer-cortex-ip... If you're just joining us, Arm very much sees the up and coming RISC-V stack as an immediate threat to the future of their business and is taking pro-active countermeasures - doing everything from awkward, backfiring smear campaigns against RISC-V[1] to straight up l…

Is there some way ARM could make money supporting an open IP like RISC-V, analagous to Red Hat for Fedora Linux? Obviously, not a perfect analogy, but...

Donations.

Re: ARM releases free Cortex-M processor cores for FPGAs

#74

Post by Someone »

zekevermillion wrote: post #62
paulgerhardt wrote: post #14

The press release linked by OP doesn't give the full story. For a better perspective see https://abopen.com/news/arm-offers-free-as-in-beer-cortex-ip... If you're just joining us, Arm very much sees the up and coming RISC-V stack as an immediate threat to the future of their business and is taking pro-active countermeasures - doing everything from awkward, backfiring smear campaigns against RISC-V[1] to straight up l…

Is there some way ARM could make money supporting an open IP like RISC-V, analagous to Red Hat for Fedora Linux? Obviously, not a perfect analogy, but...

Build RISC-V chips with proprietary extensions. License the extensions to third parties.

That would require the extensions to be popular, though, and having a corner of one fort is less ideal than having an entire fort.

Re: ARM releases free Cortex-M processor cores for FPGAs

#75

Post by jononor »

zekevermillion wrote: post #62
paulgerhardt wrote: post #14

The press release linked by OP doesn't give the full story. For a better perspective see https://abopen.com/news/arm-offers-free-as-in-beer-cortex-ip... If you're just joining us, Arm very much sees the up and coming RISC-V stack as an immediate threat to the future of their business and is taking pro-active countermeasures - doing everything from awkward, backfiring smear campaigns against RISC-V[1] to straight up l…

Is there some way ARM could make money supporting an open IP like RISC-V, analagous to Red Hat for Fedora Linux? Obviously, not a perfect analogy, but...

Custom design services. Which is more of a consulting business, so does not scale in same way as IP licensing.

Could also integrate manufacturing services, but fabs is incredibly capital intensive, making it another kind of business.

Could also keep IP licensing as a model, but open the core and push it further and further out into peripherals. Problem is that would probably kill the surrounding ecosystem of partners that do this today.

Re: ARM releases free Cortex-M processor cores for FPGAs

#77

Post by jononor »

mmirate wrote: post #64

Single-digit Cortex-M models? Dinosaurs, all. Hold your applause until we can see the innards of an AArch64 implementation.

Several billions of such chips are shipped per year. Many established segments are still moving from 8 bit to 32 bit micros, and new segments are still growing rapidly. So shipments of Cortex-Mx devices is likely to grow quite a bit still.

Re: ARM releases free Cortex-M processor cores for FPGAs

#78

Post by duskwuff »

mmirate wrote: post #64

Single-digit Cortex-M models? Dinosaurs, all. Hold your applause until we can see the innards of an AArch64 implementation.

Cortex-M is still highly relevant in embedded development. While some double-digit Cortex-M cores theoretically exist (Cortex-M23, -M33, and -M35P), there are virtually no parts in production which use them; the current state of the art is Cortex-M7.

Re: ARM releases free Cortex-M processor cores for FPGAs

#79

Post by JoachimS »

Zenst wrote: post #12
LogicCowboy wrote: post #11

This is ARM's definite response to RISC-V. As people develop their FPGA products, they will have to decide what their long term target is. If the intent is to eventually turn the code into an ASIC, RISC-V maybe the economically more sensible solution since there is no licensing costs there. However they will have to be patient with the toolchain. If the idea if the code will only be a pet project, wouldn't benefit fr…

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.

The release of the M1 is not just for Xilinx.

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=...

Re: ARM releases free Cortex-M processor cores for FPGAs

#80

Post by nickik »

stcredzero wrote: post #43
paulgerhardt wrote: post #14

The press release linked by OP doesn't give the full story. For a better perspective see https://abopen.com/news/arm-offers-free-as-in-beer-cortex-ip... If you're just joining us, Arm very much sees the up and coming RISC-V stack as an immediate threat to the future of their business and is taking pro-active countermeasures - doing everything from awkward, backfiring smear campaigns against RISC-V[1] to straight up l…

If you're just joining us, Arm very much sees the up and coming RISC-V stack as an immediate threat to the future of their business and is taking pro-active countermeasures By any chance, does anyone know if Intel is funding RISC-V? According to the logic of "Commoditizing the Complement" one way of hurting a competitor is to make their product a commodity.

Intel was the original sponsor of RISC-V because they sponsored Berkeley. They just didn't really know about it.

Since then they also invested in RISC-V startups, like SiFive.

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