FPGA multi-core processors power consumption: soft- core vs. hard-core

Abstract

Actually multi-core processors designs are limited in power consumption and performance. Consequently, it is not possible to optimize further the performance without increasing power consumption. The main challenge in multi-core processors is the fact that they have heterogeneous hardware components. This article will study different technologies for implementing multi-core processors in FPGA devices. The minimum requirement to ensure low power consumption is parallelism. The purpose of this study is to highlight the latest methodologies used in terms of environment, clock signal, testing, flexibility, cost, availability and power consumption.