ARM PROGRAM TIPS ...

Actel IGLOO and Fusion FPGAs It is commonplace now for FPGA vendors to include processor or MCU cores for their customers, but there are two distinct camps playing this game. In the first camp, the IP provided for the FPGA is proprietary. These cores are tightly controlled, optimized, and vetted by the FPGA vendor. The challenge associated with proprietary architectures is making them efficient in targeted applications and putting tools in place to support them. Experienced engineers know that there is a learning curve when using anything new; it takes time to climb the learning curve and gain the experience to deal with the product's unique characteristics. This is in direct conflict with ever-shortening development schedules, and it increases design risk. For these reasons, designers tend to reuse what they are familiar with. Over time, this causes a few architectures to become widely used industry standards, while most are used only in narrow, vertical niches. Remember that once there were plenty of companies that rolled their own microcontrollers, until open architectures and tools made that financially unfeasible.