I am interested in using a floating-point unit on a Virtex II Pro system as software emulation is very slow. Does Xilinx have any plans to develop such a unit? I am thinking about trying to implement a simple FPU in the FPGA to speed things up, but I am not sure as to the best way to connect it to the PPC core. I would like this core to be accessible to any C/Linux program running on the PowerPC unit if possible. According to the datasheet it is possible to trap floating-point operations and handle them that way, but I'm concerned that the overhead may negate any gains of hardware implementation. Any advice?
Connecting FPU core on Virtex II Pro
Feb 06, 2004
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