Re: MIPS vs ARM architectures

Daniel Lenski wrote:
Hi all,
I've been curious about the relative merits of ARM and MIPS and just
stumbled across a thread from March in which this was discussed a bit
(http://groups.google.com/group/comp.arch.embedded/browse_frm/thread/732d062b040a5039/6261b3e0103cb19b?lnk=st&q=arm+processor&rnum=1#6261b3e0103cb19b).

I'm a physics student and have gotten interested in RISC processors, since
taking a course on Verilog/FPGA. I've been playing around with the
open-source MIPS cores uCore and YACC (from opencores.org), and it's
pretty fun to get a 100 MHz MIPS processor running on my Altera
development board.

Then you should also look a FPGA specific 32 bit cores too.


I was under the impression that ARM's instruction set allows for denser
code (even without Thumb), since it allows barrel shifting in arithmetic
instructions and post-increment of index registers. It seems like a very
clever design to me. On the other hand, MIPS has twice as many registers,
32 vs. 16.

So, that means BOTH vendors can select benchmarks, that make their cores
"look good".

And all (I think?) licensed MIPS processors include an MMU,
while many ARM cores do not have an MMU. Then, ARM is more popular it
seems, but has very high licensing costs. And ARM's assembly language
might be easier to work with, but which is better for compilers?

I'm wondering what others think... what are the relative merits of the two
architectures? Am I correct to think that MIPS might allow faster clock
speeds and smaller dies, because of its simpler instruction set? Anyway,
I'd love to know what others think. Myself, I have only coded assembly
language for x86 and AVR (8-bit RISC microcontroller), so I don't have any
low-level experience with 32-bit RISC.

The Core vendors will pitch that a) the core is everything and b) Theirs is the best! (and remember, there are MANY cores from MIPS and ARM)

The reality is the core matters less and less, and Memory bandwidth, Power and peripherals will determine how your system works.
Then there is pure availability.
Try and buy a MIPS Flash based Microcontroller ?

There is more and more choice in the 32 bit MCU area: Soft CPUs, that
are optimised for FPGAs, Freescale have a new V1 Coldfire, Atmel have a
new AVR32 range (as well as ARM7 and ARM9), Zilog have Z16F, Infineon have the XC2200, and there are many vendors offering ARM uC.....

Few these days will care about assembler level code, so choose the
best uC for the task you have.

Debug support, and tools, will start to matter in many design starts.

-jg



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Relevant Pages

  • Re: MIPS vs ARM architectures
    ... architecture and how to prototype and tinker with these things. ... On the other hand, MIPS has ... I'm guessing ARM would look good in a benchmark with arrays and data ... The Core vendors will pitch that a) the core is everything and b) Theirs ...
    (comp.arch.embedded)
  • Re: MIPS vs ARM architectures
    ... I've been curious about the relative merits of ARM and MIPS and just ... pretty fun to get a 100 MHz MIPS processor running on my Altera ...
    (comp.arch.embedded)
  • MIPS vs ARM architectures
    ... I've been curious about the relative merits of ARM and MIPS and just ... I was under the impression that ARM's instruction set allows for denser ...
    (comp.arch.embedded)
  • Re: MIPS vs ARM architectures
    ... I've been curious about the relative merits of ARM and MIPS and just ... For pure architecture curiosity look at the 16 bit Freescale xgate RISC ...
    (comp.arch.embedded)
  • Re: ARM in FPGAs?
    ... There has even been thoughts of hardening the MicroBlazecore, ... PPC, ARM, Microblaze.... ... I hope MIPS could be an option too! ... a lot of device using it and maybe using FPGA as glue for a hard MIPS ...
    (comp.arch.fpga)