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Cyclone V SoC doubt

Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
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Hi, 

 

 

I will have to program a RISC-V processor and I wanted to know if it's possible to access to ARM Cortex-A9 L1 and L2 caches or if I will have to use FPGA memory as cache. Also, I wanted to know what are the controllers that they provide for memory. 

 

 

As I understand having a SoC FPGA allows you to use a high level functionality (with the processor) and also could use real-time operations or data processing using FPGA, am I wrong? 

 

 

Thanks you so much.
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
474 Views

Joel, 

 

the A9's L1 & L2 caches can only be accessed/used by the A9. 

 

Regards
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
474 Views

Ericv, 

 

In that case I will have to use RAM memory as an L1 and L2 caches for my project because ARM Cortex-A9 can't be programmed in VHDL. 

 

As I understand having a SoC FPGA allow us to use a high computation algorithm in the processor while the FPGA is doing some data processing or controlling real time systems with a high bandwidth between both, am I wrong? 

 

 

Thank you, 

Joel
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
474 Views

 

--- Quote Start ---  

Ericv, 

 

In that case I will have to use RAM memory as an L1 and L2 caches for my project because ARM Cortex-A9 can't be programmed in VHDL. 

 

As I understand having a SoC FPGA allow us to use a high computation algorithm in the processor while the FPGA is doing some data processing or controlling real time systems with a high bandwidth between both, am I wrong? 

 

Thank you, 

Joel 

--- Quote End ---  

 

 

A SOC FPGA is just a hybrid combination of a CPU device and an FPGA device. There have been standalone ARM CPU chips for quite a while, as well as FPGA devices. The SOC (system on chip) basically just merges together a dual core ARM CPU chip and an FPGA (it is actually a lot more complex than that, but if you squint at a block diagram that is what it looks like). 

 

ARM is the CPU of choice for SOCs (both Intel/Altera and Xilinx) because of the nature of ARM Co's business model of initially supplying design IP to customers rather than silicon devices. ARM also more or less has a lock on 'pure' SOC devices like those from Broadcom (think Raspberry PI) and Qualcomm (think Android smartphones).
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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
474 Views

 

--- Quote Start ---  

A SOC FPGA is just a hybrid combination of a CPU device and an FPGA device. There have been standalone ARM CPU chips for quite a while, as well as FPGA devices. The SOC (system on chip) basically just merges together a dual core ARM CPU chip and an FPGA (it is actually a lot more complex than that, but if you squint at a block diagram that is what it looks like). 

 

ARM is the CPU of choice for SOCs (both Intel/Altera and Xilinx) because of the nature of ARM Co's business model of initially supplying design IP to customers rather than silicon devices. ARM also more or less has a lock on 'pure' SOC devices like those from Broadcom (think Raspberry PI) and Qualcomm (think Android smartphones). 

--- Quote End ---  

 

 

Thank you so much.
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