Analysis: Inside the ARM-Xilinx deal

Richard Nass, EETimes
(10/22/2009 8:12 PM EDT)

There's a lot that's not being said about the deal announced earlier this week by ARM and Xilinx. What is known is that Xilinx has licensed ARM's Cortex processor IP, and that the two companies are developing next-generation AMBA interconnect technology. But if you read between the lines, you can see where the partnership is likely headed. First and foremost, what took so long? I wondered for years why Xilinx never adopted the ARM architecture like many of its competitors. The answer lies in the development of the next-generation AMBA bus specification, which Xilinx is calling "an optimized interconnect standard for FPGAs." Xilinx designers likely felt that without this new development, they couldn't get the maximum potential from the ARM architecture, and therefore had no desire to be a "me-too" FPGA vendor.

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