  In recent years, Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) have evolved rapidly
paving the way for a whole new range of computing paradigms. On the other hand,
computer applications are evolving. There is a rising demand for a system that
is general-purpose and yet has the processing abilities to accommodate current
trends in application processing. This work proposes a design and
implementation of a tightly-coupled FPGA-based dual-processor platform. We
architect a platform that optimizes the utilization of FPGA resources and
allows for the investigation of practical implementation issues such as cache
design. The performance of the proposed prototype is then evaluated, as
different configurations of a uniprocessor and a dual-processor system are
studied and compared against each other and against published results for
common industry-standard CPU platforms. The proposed implementation utilizes
the Nios II 32-bit embedded soft-core processor architecture designed for the
Altera Cyclone III family of FPGAs.
