Altera has added Freescale’s 32bit V1 ColdFire core to its library of FPGA soft cores.

"To create system-level designs using Cyclone III FPGAs, designers can now choose a Freescale, ARM Cortex M1 or our Nios II soft processor core," said Altera.

All are available through Altera’s SOPC Builder tool.

"Designers can select functions from the Altera or third-party intellectual property core libraries to include in their FPGA," the firm said. "SOPC Builder automatically generates interconnect logic and creates a test bench to verify functionality, saving valuable design time."

The core will be available via a free license from licensing specialist IPextreme in the third quarter of this year.

According to IPextreme, the V1 core for Cyclone has the same instruction set as Freescale’s V1 and V4 cores.

Simplified for entry-level 32-bit embedded applications, "the small-footprint core is designed to enhance system utilization, resulting in the lowest power consumption of any ColdFire MCU product to date, while offering more than ten times the performance of 8-bit MCUs", claimed IPextreme. "Area and speed are optimised to achieve more than 100Mhz."

The core has a two-stage instruction-fetch pipeline and two-stage operand-execution pipeline.

SOPC Builder tool is in Altera’s Quartus II software, which comes in both subscription and free web editions.