Dear Sir:

I am new to open cores and I have a general question about the use of the "open core" projects.

Recently, I saw a VHDL core that is intended to be a substitute for the Texas Instrument's MSP430 processor. Go to this link for a better understanding:

https://opencores.org/projects/msp430_vhdl

I always liked working with the MSP430 because it was easy to use and the MSP430 has some great features that cannot be found on other processors. However, the problem that I had with the MSP430 was the small amount of RAM on the chip. I would love to be able to modify the MSP430 so that it could have more RAM.

My question is:

Let's say I downloaded the MSP430 core to a high end FPGA development board, will I be able to utilize all the RAM on the development board by modifying the VHDL code of the MSP430 core?

If the answer to this question is yes, what software development IDE would be suitable to develop high level code for the MSP430 (in other words, what development environment would be compatible with this VHDL core)?

I use a Xilinx tool chain... YMMV

I download a core... evaluate the core and attempt to build it in my tool chain.
Then I evaluate the performance and quality.
After that I look at how I can adapt the core to act as a module for my application.
Usually this requires some changes to the port logic and maybe some other changes to the HDL code.

Eventually I bundle it as a component that can be instanced in a system design.

One of the first things I usually do for processors is modify the memory interface to improve integration flexibility.

TL;DR
Open Cores means you get access to a big chunk of work that can help you get a long way towards a system design, but you have to do a lot of your own work in understanding the project and how to modify it. Don't expect sales engineers here.