What role does the non-processor part of these announcements play – like AMBA interconnect, IP, and memory?
Xilinx says that AMBA (and particularly the not-yet-announced next-generation AMBA) will form a key part of the strategy for interconnecting ALL IP in FPGAs, not just IP that relates to processors. They go farther to show that these connections can be on-chip or off-chip. Xilinx paints a picture that AMBA represents a new era in plug-and-play (and also “design-and-sell”) IP. SPECULATION: Many people will still want their processors outside of their FPGAs. The AMBA strategy lets you put an ARM processor next to your FPGA and presumably put all or most of your peripherals on the FPGA – along with some possible compute acceleration for things like signal processing algorithms. The combination gives rise to the idea of a two-chip architecture that could solve a wide variety of very difficult problems. We’d expect people to start making general-purpose development/prototyping/production boards using exactly this combination. 8) Why would customers want the solutions implied by these announc
