With regard to my previous blogs on Tabula and their new ABAX 3PLDs (FPGAs based on their unique Spacetime architecture) – [see also *Tabula launches ABAX FPGAs based on 3D Spacetime architecture* and *Another coup for the folks at new FPGA vendor Tabula*] – they just send me some rather exciting news...

It seems that the folks at IPextreme (who bill themselves as "The company bringing famous IP (intellectual property) to SoC (system-on-chip) designers worldwide") and the guys and gals at Tabula are jointly announcing Tabula’s selection of the ColdFire embedded controller as the 32-bit processor architecture of choice for Tabula's ABAX 3PLDs.

Under this agreement, Tabula’s customers will have access to Freescale ColdFire processor cores and other valuable IP cores at prices competitive with processor platforms from leading FPGA suppliers. IPextreme will deliver and support the ColdFire processor cores through IPextreme’s XPack technology.

"We chose the ColdFire processor for its high performance, compact size, rich ecosystem, and standard AMBA system bus for connection of on-chip peripherals" said Alain Bismuth, Vice President of Marketing at Tabula, Inc. "And, since the same ColdFire IP cores have been deployed for many years in millions of Freescale Semiconductor devices and in general licensing by IPextreme for several years now, we consider the ColdFire processor to be the ideal solution for our customers."

IPextreme packages, delivers, and supports IP for several versions of Freescale’s popular ColdFire architecture at different price/performance points. "We see ColdFire processors as the perfect processor platform for Tabula’s customers" said Warren Savage, CEO of IPextreme, "The ColdFire IP cores are among our most widely used products and are easy to use due to their high quality design, maturity, ease-of-integration, and vast ecosystem of development tools and software."

The companies also say that this announcement underscores the success of the alliance between IPextreme and Freescale Semiconductor with respect to making the ColdFire architecture available to SoC designers around the globe. "Our relationship with IPextreme has enabled us to bring the ColdFire architecture to new markets and applications in addition to those in which our ColdFire microcontrollers have a strong history of success" said John Weil, Global Enablement Manager Industrial Microcontrollers at Freescale Semiconductor. "We’re excited that Tabula has chosen ColdFire processors as its standard 32-bit processor architecture and confident in our relationship with IPextreme and their ability to help make Tabula and its customers successful."

So what does this actually mean? Well, as you'll see from my earlier blogs, Tabula have created a very interesting new FPGA fabric that – they claim – has higher logic density, higher memory bit density, and higher DSP capability than existing high-end FPGAs at an incredibly affordable price point. For example, their highest end part with 630,000 look-up tables (LUTs), 5.5 megaBYTES of RAM, and 1280 18x18 multiplier/accumulators costs only $200!

But fabric on its own is not enough – today's designers also need access to IP. Tabula users already have access to IP certified compatible with the ABAX family such as DDR3/2 memory controllers, PCI Express, and Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet MACs, so a processor offering was the next logical move.

Personally I'm not overly familiar with the ColdFire processor, so I just called MPU/MCU expert Kenton Williston to inform him about Tabula's announcement and to ask his opinion. Kenton told me that his off-the-cuff reaction was that this was something of an unusual choice. He said that there was nothing wrong with the ColdFire processor – which he ranked as being in the same "space" as an ARM 9 or a MIPS core. Kenton also noted that ColdFire was popular in the past, but he felt that it seemed to have lost some momentum in recent times.

Hmmm... interesting. So this didn’t sound too wonderful, but if there's one thing we know about the folks at Tabula, it's that they aren’t dummies and there's invariably a good reason for anything they do, so I gave them a call and they explained as follows:  

This CPU decision is largely driven by the markets we are addressing. From a technical perspective a CPU is a CPU, and if your C code compiles successfully than you have no reason to care whether it is a Coldfire, ARM, MIPS, or Microblaze so long as the core is small, fast, and has a full suite of development and debug tools.

Tabula chose Coldfire largely because it is very well accepted in the communications equipment markets as well as other traditional FPGA end-markets like medical, industrial, and mil/aero. Coldfire has a very rich development environment (most important) and an extensive set of peripherals while delivering good performance in a small footprint. This makes it the most sensible choice for Tabula and gives us a very strong position.

Well, that all makes sense to me. What do you think?