A hard-core is hardware baked into the silicone of the FPGA from the fab in addition to the programable gates on board and is therefore faster and more space an

A hard-core is hardware baked into the silicone of the FPGA from the fab in addition to the programable gates on board and is therefore faster and more space and energy efficient, soft-core is software synthesized from HDL code and programed into the FPGA using its available gates, making it slower and less eficient.