Updated: Micro-sequencing crams 8051 into tiny FPGA space

BY Steven Bush, Electronics Weekly, Jun. 15, 2016 – 

Californian start-up MicroCore Labs has announced an 8051 soft processor core, four of which will fit into 1227 LUTs on a Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA.

The core is called MCL51.

"Because it is based on a microsequencer, this four-core demonstration is even smaller than a single soft-core gate-based 8051," the company founder, known simply as Edward, told Electronics Weekly. "The execution unit of the MCL51 can consume as few as 312 LUTs and a single Block RAM of an Artix-7."

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