NETMF on FPGA?

Just curious…

Would it be possible to run NETMF on an FPGA? I see there is an ARM core from OpenCores.

What I’m even more interested in is the possibility to implement an MSIL VM in silicon. Can you imagine NETMF running directly on the metal… And in parallel?!!

I spent a few months trying to get Linux running on a commercial CPU core on an FPGA. This was in 2004 so I don’t know how things have changed.

Some problems:
My FPGA(Spartan3) could only run the CPU core at 50MHz. Not exactly WOW… :frowning:
FPGAs are expensive compared to a CPU chip. If you want speed that you need Xilinx Vertex or something like that, which runs into the $100s of dollars, only comes in BGA and you need $$$ for the synthesis tools.
I used the Microblaze CPU from Xilinx, which made like A LOT easier than taking some VHDL source and adapting in to your needs. Microblaze had a nice GUI to configure the core and to select all the peripherals you needed. Even with this things where really daunting.

I would say, if you need SMP then use a dual core CPU. If you need reconfiguration then use a standard CPU and add an FPGA.

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