"Pssst! Hey, buddy… wanna download some wild new soft core—for free?"

If you're tempted by that offer, Altera has got a deal for you. The company that brought you HardCopy FPGAs hasn't forgotten its softer side. There’s a market for soft-core IP, too, and not just as a gateway for the hard stuff. Some people actually prefer it. And for them, we present the MP32.

The MP32 is Altera's new 32-bit, MIPS-compatible microprocessor specially designed to run inside standard Altera FPGAs. It's a soft-core implementation, meaning it uses the normal FPGA fabric rather than being embedded, or diffused, inside a special chip. That means you can download MP32 into your existing Altera FPGAs, try it out, and erase it if you don't like it.