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> ARM itself is not very nice design from contemporary point of view. [...] they decided to use that ARM thing ARM CPUs are the de-facto standard in the embedd

by adwn 8y ago

> ARM itself is not very nice design from contemporary point of view. [...] they decided to use that ARM thing ARM CPUs are the de-facto standard in the embedded world (except for simple 8-bit MCUs), so what should Xilinx have done? Design their own, proprietary CPU architecture and ISA? Choose some other architecture with 2% market share? Both paths would have led to the immediate death of the whole product line. > 1) ARM is not RISC (multiregister load/store execute in several clocks) So? Who cares? > 2) too much of initial design of first ARM (which was not planned for longterm evolution) is visible in ISA. Ah, yes, technological purism – the quickest way to practical irrelevance.

planteen 8y ago
> ARM CPUs are the de-facto standard in the embedded world (except for simple 8-bit MCUs), so what should Xilinx have done? Design their own, proprietary CPU architecture and ISA? Choose some other architecture with 2% market share? Both paths would have led to the immediate death of the whole product line. Totally agree. IIRC, didn't Xilinx have another hard core CPU+FPGA design before the Zynq using a PowerPC? PPC is largely irrelevant these days. The high-performance embedded space is dominated by ARM today with x86 and PPC taking the rest. There's no way Xilinx would choose x86 with Intel owning Altera. Maybe in 5-10 years RISC-V will start to eat some of ARM's share, but that remains to be seen.
- 0xcde4c3db 8y ago
  > didn't Xilinx have another hard core CPU+FPGA design before the Zynq using a PowerPC? Yes; more than one. There were at least the Virtex II Pro, Virtex 4 FX, and Virtex 5 FX families.
- thesz 8y ago
  Intel didn't own Altera in 2010.
thesz 8y ago
RISC-V started 2010, the year Zynq was dreamed up. Candence bought XTensa (much less than 2%) and I know of several products using their cores. My arguments about ARM CPU inferiority are about ARM CPU inferiority and related vendor lock-in. I summarize them: for your substantial money you get inferior CPU you cannot improve much, for prototyping and then for product, with highly aggressive pricing when you want to run ASIC.
- adwn 8y ago
  > RISC-V started 2010, the year Zynq was dreamed up. Exactly: much too late for Zynq, and still a minuscule market share even 8 years later. > for your substantial money you get inferior CPU Wrong, and furthermore, you still didn't get the point: It's not about theoretical technological perfection, but about the surrounding ecosystem, tooling, related IP, available expertise, and support. > CPU you cannot improve much Also wrong, and irrelevant for 99% of use cases. > with highly aggressive pricing when you want to run ASIC Irrelevant for 99% of FPGA designs.

by adwn 8y ago

planteen 8y ago

> ARM CPUs are the de-facto standard in the embedded world (except for simple 8-bit MCUs), so what should Xilinx have done? Design their own, proprietary CPU architecture and ISA? Choose some other architecture with 2% market share? Both paths would have led to the immediate death of the whole product line. Totally agree. IIRC, didn't Xilinx have another hard core CPU+FPGA design before the Zynq using a PowerPC? PPC is largely irrelevant these days. The high-performance embedded space is dominated by ARM today with x86 and PPC taking the rest. There's no way Xilinx would choose x86 with Intel owning Altera. Maybe in 5-10 years RISC-V will start to eat some of ARM's share, but that remains to be seen.

0xcde4c3db 8y ago
> didn't Xilinx have another hard core CPU+FPGA design before the Zynq using a PowerPC? Yes; more than one. There were at least the Virtex II Pro, Virtex 4 FX, and Virtex 5 FX families.
thesz 8y ago
Intel didn't own Altera in 2010.

thesz 8y ago

RISC-V started 2010, the year Zynq was dreamed up. Candence bought XTensa (much less than 2%) and I know of several products using their cores. My arguments about ARM CPU inferiority are about ARM CPU inferiority and related vendor lock-in. I summarize them: for your substantial money you get inferior CPU you cannot improve much, for prototyping and then for product, with highly aggressive pricing when you want to run ASIC.

adwn 8y ago
> RISC-V started 2010, the year Zynq was dreamed up. Exactly: much too late for Zynq, and still a minuscule market share even 8 years later. > for your substantial money you get inferior CPU Wrong, and furthermore, you still didn't get the point: It's not about theoretical technological perfection, but about the surrounding ecosystem, tooling, related IP, available expertise, and support. > CPU you cannot improve much Also wrong, and irrelevant for 99% of use cases. > with highly aggressive pricing when you want to run ASIC Irrelevant for 99% of FPGA designs.