Xilinx puts ARM core into its FPGAs  April 27, 2010  rich.nass-
April 27, 2010  My first reaction was, "It's about time." My
second reaction was, "I hope they did it right." Let me explain.
Xilinx, considered by many to be the market leader for FPGAs,
had a hole in its lineup, at least in my eyes. For at least a
couple of years, I asked the folks at Xilinx why they weren't
making a serious run at ARM-based FPGAs.  I learned that it
wasn't as simple as dropping the core into the company's
library. There were It actually took some design issues that
needed to be overcome to ensure that the ARM core could operate
at its maximum efficiency. Those changes were put in place last
fall, when Xilinx announced a technology agreement with ARM.
Essentially, the technology agreement revolved around changes
made to the AMBA bus to keep the programmable logic tightly
coupled with the processor core. Xilinx adopted ARM physical IP,
and the two companies made a technical commitment to work
together to define the AMBA 4 specif