Microcontrollers and FPGAs often work together in embedded systems. As more functions move into the FPGA, however, debugging the interface between the two devices becomes more difficult. The ...

This article reviews the relative strengths and weaknesses of microcontroller (MCU), digital signal processor (DSP), field programmable gate array (FPGA) and application-specific integrated circuit ...

This paper describes the design and implementation of a version of the 8051 microcontroller, one of the most commercially used microcontrollers in FPGA with reconfigurable instruction set.

When you think of microcontroller development, you probably picture either a breadboard with a chip or a USB-connected circuit board. But Tim Ansell pictured an ARM dev board that is almost completely ...

Altera’s non-volatile MAX 10 FPGA (Fig. 1) makes a great platform for custom microcontroller applications using soft-cores like Altera’s 32-bit NIOS II processor. It has on-chip flash and RAM ...

After trying out hardware hacking using an FPGA to interface with target hardware, [Grazfather] was inspired to try using the iCEBreaker (one of the many hobbyist FPGAs to have recently flooded the ...

This file type includes high resolution graphics and schematics when applicable. FPGAs are wonderful tools. They consist of a collection of logic cells called lookup tables (LUTs) surrounded by an ...

Embedded FPGA is a new development this decade. There are now multiple vendors offering eFPGA on a wide range of process nodes with multiple customers. eFPGA Vendors Menta has had eFPGA available for ...

CML Microcircuits' CMX7861 'FirmCODEC' is a full featured analogue front end for dsp/fpga/microcontroller based systems. According to CML, the device is a combination of codec, embedded signal ...

The primary benefit of using MCUs has been high level system integration combined with relatively low cost. However, there are hidden costs associated with these devices well beyond the unit price.