Xilinx will offer both soft and hardware versions of ARM processors within its FPGAs as early as next year.
This follows a year-long collboration between Xilinx and ARM.
Xilinx is adopting ARM Cortex processor IP using specially developed versions of the ARM cell libraries and embedded memories.
"This will allow us to offer both soft and hardware ARM processors on FPGAs in the future," Vin Ratford, senior v-p of worldwide marketing at Xilinx told EW.
One result of the collaboration will be a version of ARM’s AMBA on-chip interconnect bus optimised for FPGA architectures.
"There will be future versions of AMBA for FPGAs," said Mike Inglis, executive v-p and general manager of the processor division at ARM.
"We are mapping AMBA into the FPGA spec, both the electrical and physical implementations," said Inglis.
The two companies are working with third party IP providers and design tool firms including Cadence, CAST, Denali, Mentor Graphics, Northwest Logic, Omiino, Sarance, Synopsys and Xylon to support the new version of the AMBA specification.
This will be Xilinx’ first implementation of the ARM processor in its FPGAs.
Rivals Altera and Actel already offer ARM soft core processors in their FPGAs.