Soft Processors and Licensing

Just a bit about the project I'm working on: Have an FPGA gathering and manipulating data, and we need a processor to run the show and to send the data over a network. At the moment we are planning on using a soft-processor. Still early stages in the project and and I'm currently deciding between Cyclone and Spartan. I haven't had any experience with either Nios II or MicroBlaze (and I believe that these are the only real options out there if you want strong community and/ or professional support).

Anyway, what's really confusing me is the licensing issues. I know these questions have been asked before but I'm still confused.

I understand that to use the MicroBlaze processor you either need to purchase the ISE Embedded Edition or purchase Platform Studio and the Embedded Development Kit (and use it with ISE WebPACK). However from what I can find out it says that you're free to put MicroBlaze processors on as many devices as you wish so long as they remain on site. I can't find any information about what type of license you need to include MicroBlaze in a product being sold.

In the case of Nios II, you can use and develop with the Nios II with the Quartus II Web Edition because it comes with the OpenCore license that lets you use IP on an Altera FPGA so long as your development board is plugged in to the PC (I assume it doesn't matter who's hardware you use). The e variant you can use for free, but the other variants require a license to work when disconnected. The license you need is IP-NIOS, and though I can't find an official price listing anywhere I've seen $US500 being mentioned on forums... and presumably this allows you to sell as many products as you wish with Nios II processors on them?

I've stated a whole bunch of assumptions here and I'd appreciate it if someone could tell me if I'm on the right track. Any advice on choosing between MicroBlaze and Nios II, or is there another option I'm missing? My company wants to spend as little as possible on licensing and/or development tools (this is their first time using an FPGA in a product), but my time is effectively free to them (I'm there under a research grant). That said, I know the free way is usually the hard way so if I can make a compelling case for them to spend money it may make my life a lot easier.

Reply to
Alexander Kane
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1) You will have a lot of headaches using Xilinx EDK. MicroBlaze is not a softcpu to start with. 2) You can use LatticeMico32 softcpu (which is free) on Altera or Xilinx FPGAs. E.g. check the opensource project "Milkymist", they're running LM32 softcpu on Spartan-6. 3) You can use Nios II/e (economy), which is also free, but I am not sure it could handle network speeds.

Anyway, I would definitely go for Altera, but if You're interested in Xilinx devices, then go to MIlkymist page. They've developed memory controller + ethernet mac + many other cores.

Reply to
scrts

You have misunderstood what a "site license" means. This means that the software or IP can be used within the limited physical distance of the license server and not within a national or world basis for the company that purchased the license.

The final bitstream can be shipped world wide.

Ed McGettigan

-- Xilinx Inc.

Reply to
Ed McGettigan

You have misunderstood what a "site license" means. This means that the software or IP can be used within the limited physical distance of the license server and not within a national or world basis for the company that purchased the license.

The final bitstream can be shipped world wide.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

So companies, that has HQ/support/testing in USA, but most programmers in e.g. India, can't share the same licence server? Even through VPN? It is basically possible, but out of the licence?

Reply to
scrts

Thanks for clearing this up for me.

In regards to point (1) this is obviously your opinion, I was wondering if anyone else would like to comment on this. I am aware that LatticeMico32 is free, but I understand that an optimised version is available for Lattice FPGAs (so it would make sense to use it with a Lattice FPGA), whereas to use it on other FPGAs you have to deal with a Verilog dump. I'm just a little weary of learning Verilog while working on this project. Furthermore I have heard that the community support for LatticeMico32 is poor.

Also is someone able to confirm about pricing for Nios II? (see first post)

Reply to
Alexander Kane

If the developers are in India then the licenses should be based in India. In most cases support and testing roles would have no need for licenses to the EDK or IP cores.

This is really a conversation that is best suited for your Sales person than the internet.

Ed McGettigan

-- Xilinx Inc.

Reply to
Ed McGettigan

I presume this is to stop multi-national companies having _one_ license to cover wordwide development? (This isn't really a practical proposition but is the extreme case)

Nial

Reply to
Nial Stewart

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I think he may be getting MicroBlaze mixed up with PicoBlaze or even the PowerPC versions of the Vertex CPUs. To the best of my knowledge both PicoBlaze and MicroBlaze CPUs are soft cores. The MicroBlaze is fully synthesized while the PicoBlaze is structural HDL which instantiates the LUTs and FFs rather than inferring them. But that does not make the PicoBlaze CPU a hard core.

I've never dug into the details of the Lattice Micro32, but what do you mean by Verilog "dump"? Verilog is actually q

Reply to
rickman

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I seem to have fat fingered this post before I was done typing.

Verilog is actually quite easy to pick up. If the code is already written I would not expect it to be at all hard to compile. What do you mean when you say there is an "optimized" version for Lattice devices? Do you mean they have a pre-compiled version?

Can't help you there. Wouldn't it be a good idea to talk to Altera for pricing?

Rick

Reply to
rickman

Not true. The RTL is available and it's the same code for any FPGA (apart from the memories).

Cheers, Jon

Reply to
Jon Beniston

There is a version of the uBlaze that's shipped in an XAPP - you just instantiate a core, and use GCC for development. No EDK needed.

My understanding is that the generated bitstream using any flavor of uBlaze is without any additional cost (provided that it's used in a Xilinx chip.)

There's a Free-NIOS now. It's not as "good" as the payfor-NIOS, but it works just fine.

Don't ignore OpenCores. There are a couple of processors there (MIPS, OpenRISC, etc) that are portable to and supported by GCC variants.

IMnsHO, the value add for NIOS and uBlaze is the ease (speed) of development - When you graduate you'll find that time goes from "free" to "priceless".

RK

Reply to
NeedCleverHandle

W dniu 5/7/2011 02:11, Alexander Kane pisze:

I used Nios in one of my projects. Around 16 running cores on 10 fpga's with single JTAG chain. Really great.

I also had such problem with Altera - licensing & pricing. I had to clarify this before I started with my project.

With IP-NIOS Licence you can sell as many products as you want. Without also but only slowest NIOS version - now is for free.

Without IP-NIOS you can't make flash programming files for FPGA( for fastest & middle version), you can only download image to FPGA using JTAG. In other words you have to load image after every power-up.

In this case free NIOS version really works . I know only one disadventage - C/C++ IDE is based on eclips which makes me somtimes upset.

BTW I've never used Xilinx uBlaze or similar - so I can't compare.

Adam

Reply to
Górski Adam

Thank you, everyone, for your helpful replies. Unfortunately the funding for this project got pulled yesterday. But at least I've learnt something from this.

- Alexander

Reply to
Alexander Kane

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