What is "picoblaze"

PicoBlaze is the designation of a series of three free soft processor cores from Xilinx for use in their FPGA and CPLD products. They are based on an 8-bit RISC architecture and can reach speeds up to 100 MIPS on the Virtex 4 FPGA's family. The processors have an 8-bit address and data port for access to a wide range of peripherals. The license of the cores allows their free use, albeit only on Xilinx devices, and they come with development tools. Third party tools are available from Mediatronix and others. Also PacoBlaze, a behavioral and device independent implementation of the cores exists and is released under the BSD License. The PauloBlaze is an open source VHDL implementation under the Apache License.

The PicoBlaze design was originally named KCPSM which stands for "Constant(K) Coded Programmable State Machine" (formerly "Ken Chapman's PSM"). Ken Chapman was the Xilinx systems designer who devised and implemented the microcontroller.