Jeff Duntemann wrote:
This is very blue-sky,
FPGA processors are used a lot in embedded projects (though of course
usually with programming in C). As well Altera as Xilinx have µCLinux
for their processors (full Linux to come very soon) These are the
"primary" FPGA companies, but there are several other, too, that also
have 32 bit processors (and Linux) for their chips.
Because of the very versatile usability of such projects (and dropping
hardware prices) they increasingly gain acceptance in the market. Of
course there are lots of SDKs, OEM / prototyping boards etc to play
with, so you don't need to build any hardware for starting.
but it would be an interesting enhancement to Lazarus to target ARM or
Atmel AVR CPUs in the manner of the Processing language/IDE:
Lazarus already can create ARM programs (as well for Linux as for
WinCE). I did a (very basic) WinCE test and my program did run as
expected as of the first upload without any debugging. As the NIOS
instruction set is quite similar to ARM (thus dissimilar to x86) I think
it's a viable task to do a NIOS port. And _if_ starting a port for
embedded use at all, I would do it on a technology that is likely do be
one of the winners in that world.
-Michael
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