hardware speed vs software speed

[anandanips]

can anybody answer for hardware speed Vs software speed. which one is faster?
for eg designing a router in FPGA vs software router... which one is best..?

 

[sameem_shabbir]

Hardware is always faster than software

 

[hcet]

Hardware always can be faster than software ;-)

 

[xtcx]

Hardware is always faster than software. Take any example of mcu based where you build virtual harware (Vs) Vlsi Based egs where you build real hardware

 

[shawndaking]

however software design is much much faster then hardware. the main reason are :

a. software code is more common (open sources, libraries ). that means it is very easy to take software packages or libraries and integrate them.

b. software languages are more advanced - c, c++ jawa to hw languages.

c. software tools are more advanced and debugged, because more users are programmers.

d. software tools are chipper, and somtimes free (gnu tools), while hw tools are very expensive.

e. compilation time in sw is much much faster then in hw tools - in virtex it can take you hours to p@r.

f. more programmers then hw developper.

 

[ashokjain]

Actually it depends on the hardware used and the processor on which you are porting your software.

There cannot be a general answer for this. In most of the cases during design which involves a software and a hardware, people will do profiling to assess if a function consumes too much time on software and if it can be done through a hardware accelerator.

 

[xtcx]

I don't think the software is faster than hardware...The purpose of software is to reduce the size and complexity in HW desgin and to increase the adaptability of various virtual HW we need each time..However if you need a speed boost,a true hardware module is required in every aspect...For example,to execute a software code in a mcu, it requires some ALU and control logics which itself eats much machine cycle. What if you're able to do that same operation by forming a permanant logic?...No wastage of clks. Best example is to run some gate operation like C = (A.B)+(B.A). You will realize the operation\execution speed in a software based process consumes much clk than a hardware based process...A Sw based thing needs to do this in steps and however using PLUs in your mcu mayn't help reducing several clks, whereas doing in HW is a piece of cake with no excess clk.!

 

[sprao]

In software the execution of instructions will be a sequential process. As in the case of hardware it could be concurrent. There may be parallel blocks and the process will be much faster.

 

[dmk]

Hardware is faster than software.
As "shawndaking" posted before, the software design is faster than hardware design.