System on a chip Soft IP from the FPGA-vendor or an OpenCore-processor?

Abstract

Two different processors from two FPGA vendors and an OpenCore-processor have been investigated. For this work two different boards were used, the first was the Cyclone II FPGA Altera Board, in which the Nios II Altera microprocessor and the free processor Leon2 were tested. The second board was a SUZAKU-S board, in which the Microblaze Xilinx microprocessor and the free processor Leon2 were tested. We performed two different benchmarks in these boards, the Dhrystone and the Whetstone, to compare the different velocities between the free and not free processors. Also the documentation and ease of use of the processors is considered.