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Xilinx
Target Applications
Xilinx
MicroBlaze
Targets: Automotive, Industrial, Medical, Security
The MicroBlaze soft processing unit is a 32-bit Harvard RISC architecture with an instruction set optimized for embedded applications in Xilinx Spartan and Virtex family FPGAs. The soft processor nature of MicroBlaze makes it customizable for different applications where designers can tradeoff features for size to meet price and performance goals for automotive, medical, security and industrial applications.
Along with its IP (intellectual property) catalog, the MicroBlaze core is licensed as part of the EDK (Embedded Development Kit), so there are no royalties to pay. Programmable SoC devices with MicroBlaze and customizable IP do not suffer from end-of-life issues. MicroBlaze includes the point-to-point connection capability to implement co-processing instruction acceleration in FPGA hardware and integrates a low-latency IEEE-754 compatible FPU (Floating Point Unit). The MicroBlaze soft processor can integrate with peripherals like Gigabit Ethernet, PCI express, UART16550, SPI, I²C, GPIO, and memory controllers including DDR2, DDR3, DDR, SDRAM, SRAM and Flash memories.
The Spartan and Virtex family platform FPGAs support the embedded soft MicroBlaze processing unit with the XPS (Xilinx Platform Studio) embedded tool suite bundled with a processor IP library in the Xilinx EDK. Integrated hardware/software development kits, including pre-verified reference designs and JTAG probes/cables, kick start the design process from a known working platform. A variety of embedded specific applications notes and reference designs support MicroBlaze development.
In order to get started with MicroBlaze soft processors on any Xilinx FPGAs, complete development kits including boards, cables, reference designs and all relevant tools are available from the Xilinx development kits page.