Industry Expert Blogs
How ARM Used Xilinx Virtex-7 3D FPGAs to Validate its 64-Bit ARM Cortex-A57 and -A53 Microprocessor Cores-December 5, 2013 |
Designing new microprocessor cores is a big job—the main job at ARM—and every aspect of the development process gets scrutiny with respect to speed, accuracy, and cost. Stefano Cadario, a software engineer at ARM, has just published a blog on the ARM Connected Community site describing how ARM engineers spent the last two years using FPGA logic emulation to validate the company’s first two 64-bit ARMv8 architecture microprocessor cores: the ARM Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53 processors. They did this by assembling an emulation farm build with 86 ARM Versatile Express development platforms and LogicTile Express cards, which are based on Xilinx Virtex-7 XC7V2000T 3D FPGAs—the largest FPGAs on the planet.