16-bit microprocessor dore for Actel

Hi Alan,

I believe there is a generic Nios clone called Manik (see

Hans

"Hans" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:QPT_e.3572$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe4-win.ntli.net...

Hi Hans,

how NIOS is the manik? I wasnt aware that its a NIOS clone! I assume its NIOS II clone then. Hmm I guess Altera has not understood that as well. They have been not so happy about my NIOS II derivate. My understanding is/was that altera is tolerating NIOS compatible design but is trying to shoot anyone doing NIOS-II compatible ip cores.

Antti PS too bad I only have APA075 board I would like to test your design

Hi Antti,

You are right, my apologies, I though you were the person behind Manik, Alan, please speak to Antti :-)

Regards, Hans.

"Hans" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:Ll7%e.1033$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe1-win.ntli.net...

Hm I think manik is done by the c-nit author:

my personal taste, but the niktech website a really a place to go away from - when the c-nit was published in SOURCE code it could have a little interest. but the manik netlists ? no thanks never bothered checking those out all.

Antti PS Altera did tell me that they are not happy 'through the flowers', I wonder if I can expect different talks now? I did comply to their wishes

Actel just announced availability of ARM7 in ProASIC3. There will be a small price premium on the parts - the bitstream (or fusemap or config image or whatever Actel call it) is encrypted so that there's no risk of ARM's jealously-guarded IP leaking out, and the ARM-enabled devices have some kind of internal security key, and you get to pay for that.

Software support is, obviously, rather good. Debug support is less clear right now - can they do tracing, single-step etc?

Any Actel gurus/AEs/sales-droids out there care to comment? I don't know the devices too well, and the people on the Actel booth at ARM DevCon last week weren't exactly crystal- clear about it all.

rather good? nothing=good ?

to my knowledge Actel is saying that their tools support the ARM7 for some time already, but if you download and install them, then there is nothing about ARM7 at all. :( also its nothing on the website as well. - so whatever they have announced today or earlier, nothing of it is available as of today.

so in this case I would say seeing is believing, and currently there is nothing to see :(

Antti

This type of product has to exist mainly for the column-inches the Actel marketing dept can generate.

In any practical deployment, the applied cost is very high. Latest ARM microcontrollers are now sub $2, and that's WITH Dual UARTS, SSI, SPI, i2c and ADC peripherals, _and_ FLASH and RAM.

So, it makes more sense to connect a ARM uC to a FPGA, via the SSI link, and use both for their optimium tasks.

With an IPCore + FPGA, you _still_ have to connect external CODE memory, but with a higher pin cost, and more RFI.....

The Lattice Mico8 is open source, but presently has 8 bit registers and 18 bit opcodes. The OP could look at extending that ?

-jg

I said "software support" - I didn't say "Actel software support" :-)

"Jonathan Bromley" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

some

I see. yes that is correct, and that would be the main reason to use ARM7 in first place.

Antti