The picorv32 is a nice little processor, but it's surprisingly inefficient in its use of FPGA resources compared to the performance it offers (which is very low

The picorv32 is a nice little processor, but it's surprisingly inefficient in its use of FPGA resources compared to the performance it offers (which is very low.) For small FPGAs, it's far from being the best solution. That said: there are a bunch of SOC construction tools for it, so that's definitely a redeeming factor.