What’s the fuss? ...Like we didn't have Arm technology in FPGAs for decades with the Cortex-A CPU based SoCs? Of course, but that’s the CPU integrated alongside FPGA fabric, rather than within the FPGA fabric. Arm-based FPGA SoCs have shipped in millions, and an example is the Xilinx Zync SoC family. 

The new development is that Arm DesignStart FPGA brings Cortex-M CPUs to the configurable FPGA fabric so that Arm CPUs are now available across all Xilinx FPGAs. The news of the DesignStart program update emerged on the first day of Xilinx's Developer Forum (XDF), in San Jose, USA, on Monday.

According to Arm, it is now possible to gain fast,  no cost access to proven, soft processor IP,  design integration with Xilinx tools and software development solutions to accelerate FPGA development.

Developers can choose from a spectrum of options by considering factors such as design requirements, budget, resource availability and time-to-market.

Options include SBCs, off-the-shelf chips, FPGAs and custom silicon.