TI Mixes ARM cores with DSPs and programmable logic • Hacker News Board

Re: TI Mixes ARM cores with DSPs and programmable logic

#11

Post by unwind » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 9:26 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #7

This is additional information that what I suspected was happening, is, which is that the combination of some hard "cores" + FPGA fabric is becoming useful. The original Xilinx run at this used Power PC cores but the current stuff (Zync) using ARM cores has had much better traction. Looking at the TI site they want $328 each[1] in singles, not a great price point but not horrible given their performance but I don't t…

Tiny correction: Xilinx' combination ARM+FPGA SoC is called the Zynq (http://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/soc/zynq-7000...). This latest device from TI seems to be way higher-end than the Zynq (not surprising, since it's also newer).

Re: TI Mixes ARM cores with DSPs and programmable logic

#12

Post by DrHoppenheimer » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

craigjb wrote: post #10

martxyz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with intel buying altera and they starting to use FinFET technology , i'm quite curious how XILINX,TI and other will react.

Xilinx invested heavily in TSMC's TSV interposer and likely their IN-FO fan-out packaging. These allow them to integrate more silicon area in the same package space. It can potentially offset the technology node gap, and maybe for lower cost. Yes, TSV is expensive, but a process node is even more expensive.

Multi-die FPGA packages are a giant PITA to deal with, compared to monolithic. It's a lot harder to resolve timing problems.

There's a small customer base that's already used to partitioning their designs across multiple FPGAs, and taking the huge performance hit from it (e.g., ASIC emulation). But for most, yeah... giant PITA.

Re: TI Mixes ARM cores with DSPs and programmable logic

#13

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, Jun 15, 2015, 3:25 PM UTC

unwind wrote: post #11

ChuckMcM wrote: post #7

This is additional information that what I suspected was happening, is, which is that the combination of some hard "cores" + FPGA fabric is becoming useful. The original Xilinx run at this used Power PC cores but the current stuff (Zync) using ARM cores has had much better traction. Looking at the TI site they want $328 each[1] in singles, not a great price point but not horrible given their performance but I don't t…

Tiny correction: Xilinx' combination ARM+FPGA SoC is called the Zynq ( http://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/soc/zynq-7000... ). This latest device from TI seems to be way higher-end than the Zynq (not surprising, since it's also newer).

Thanks, I am not a fan of phonetically obscured names :-). Xilinx's first foray into this space was the upper end Virtex series (the Virtex 4 and Virtex 5), I went back and looked at the pitch they gave me in 2005 around this. So here we are 10 years later and it seems like this stuff is finally getting closer to mainstream.