Multithreaded NIOS II or other embedded cores

I can't speak for Altera but I haven't heard anything about a multithreaded/hyperthreaded NIOS core. It might be better if you asked you question at the

website.

Have you check Sun's website for the OpenSPARC project? I think it supports multiple cores and hyperthreading.

Technology-wise it might still might be a little early to find a lot of projects or examples.

Derek

Thanks Derek. Yeah, I haven't come across a multithreaded version of the NIOS II so far. I was curious to know if a multithreaded NIOS is under development. Since NIOS is an Altera core, I think a multithreaded NIOS might be designed bottom-up more appropriately for an FPGA implementation compared to other multithreaded cores. Will check out the niosforum website and see if I can find any additional information there.

Yeah, I have also been looking at the OpenSPARC. Looks promising. Haven't managed to synthesize it yet because our DC environment here is not appropriately set up. I think some implementation decisions would probably have to be different for an efficient FPGA mapping. Also guess some of the Verilog would have to be modified in order to take advantage of the available FPGA architecture.

Thanks again, Shyam

Derek Simm> I can't speak for Altera but I haven't heard anything about a

The criticism I've heard most is the lack of hardware memory management (from the LINUX community on

but I honestly I don't know how much of Altera's customer base shares the same point of view. Pressuring Altera for multithreaded support, the expected response would be to implement a slave processor. I like that people are trying to use it as a full blown processor and it is nice to see the same features as a regular processor.

Derek