FPGA platform??

Mon Feb 22, 2010 2:12 pm   

Hi, I am a beginner at FPGA. I had a query that which platform is used fo
professional digital designs. Is it linux or windows??



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Mon Feb 22, 2010 4:22 pm   

All the places I have worked at (in UK) have used Windows. Some have als
used Unix/Linux. I would be surprised if no Linux-only shops existed.


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Mon Feb 22, 2010 10:30 pm   

JuNNi wrote:

Hi,

Altera support Vista 32 bit, XP 32 bit and some Linux. If you use the
free web edition
https://www.altera.com/support/software/download/altera_design/quartus_we/dnl-quartus_we.jsp
on a modern fast PC (less that 2 years old) and with at least 2 GB of
ram you should be fine for learning about FPGAs.

James

Tue Feb 23, 2010 8:13 am   

On 22 Feb., 14:12, "JuNNi" <m_junaid_muzam...@yahoo.com> wrote:

For normal FPGA Design Windows is common, as some (backend-) FPGA
tools are either Windows only or show better performance under
Windows.
For general digital design (and especially frontend of code entry and
simulation) professionals use often Linux/Solaris when it comes to
complex and large designs.

One reason for using Linux/Solaris is, that handling of large designs
requires often more than 2GB memory, but especially those tools
mentioned above that are Windows only or show bad performance under
Linux tend to be Win32 only or show bad performance in Win64 server
systems.
A rule of thumb: simple free starter kits are more on the Windows
side, professional tools could be better used on Linux Server.

bye Thomas

Tue Feb 23, 2010 3:52 pm   

Thomas Stanka <usenet_nospam_valid_at_stanka-web.de> writes:


Which tools do you have in mind here?


Especially if you're using Synopsys tools.


Petter
--
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Wed Feb 24, 2010 11:47 pm   

On 23 Feb., 15:52, Petter Gustad <newsmailco...@gustad.com> wrote:

AFAIK you get the free Modelsim version only for Windows(32bit) from
Xilinx. The free suite for Altera (Webedition) seems to be windows
only, linux requires licensing.
Several parts of the design suites ISPLever are Windows only,
Programming Actel FPGAs is only possible using Windows...

The versions of ISE I used showed not that good performance on linux.
Quartus Linux is only titled Beta, never worked with, but guess the
same here.
Actel Designer has bad performance on Linux as well.

bye Thomas

Thu Feb 25, 2010 11:21 am   

Thomas Stanka <usenet_nospam_valid_at_stanka-web.de> writes:


Yes this is true, even though some of the reasons are political.
Modelsim ASE is included with Quartus under Linux at no extra cost.
Altera has to pay royalties for their Mainwin library hence they will
not give it away, but they have a Qt based GUI now so I would expect
to see a free Quartus Webedition for Linux soon.

The free Modelsim versions are running at a reduced speed under both
Windows and Linux.

On the other hand the Synopsys VCS simulator is not available for
Windows.


Does that mean you can't generate a SVF file either?


Hmm. I don't use the GUI that much (other than for floorplanning and
signaltap/chipscope) so most of my builds are done in batch and I have
not noticed any reduced performance under Linux.


Quartus for Linux is not beta. The recently released Qt GUI front-end
is beta, but not the regular Quartus version. The performance of Linux
(Quartus 9.x) is the same as for Windows.


Petter
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

Thu Feb 25, 2010 9:45 pm   

On Feb 23, 8:13 am, Thomas Stanka <usenet_nospam_va...@stanka-web.de>
wrote:

In fact, Altera dropped support for Solaris on SPARC since version 8.0
(2 years ago?). Solaris on x386/AMD64 was never supported.
I don't follow Xilinx all that closely but I think their situation
with regard to Solaris support is identical to Altera's.

Fri Feb 26, 2010 9:38 am   

On 25 Feb., 11:21, Petter Gustad <newsmailco...@gustad.com> wrote:

Last time I used Synopsys Simulator is 10 years ago, but I don't
missed it since then .


You can generate a programming file under linux. But you can't use the
programmer (and programmer SW) neither for Antifuse nor for Flash-
based.
The core generator for more complex cores(PCI and so on) also requires
Windows.
And as already stated, the actual version of designer under Linux is
to slow to do reasonable layout/floorplan of complex designs.


bye Thomas

Fri Feb 26, 2010 10:25 am   

Thomas Stanka <usenet_nospam_valid_at_stanka-web.de> writes:


I've used VCS since it was first released by Chronologic until two
years ago, since then I've used ModelSim and I really miss VCS...


It's probably a tough job for the smaller companies to develop
multi-platform software since they don't have the resources that
Xilinx and Altera has.

However, it could have been interesting if some of the smaller vendors
would open source their software to get some community help. But some
of their software might be based upon some commercial packages outside
their control, which makes it impossible unless it's re-written.

Petter
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

Tue Mar 02, 2010 5:14 pm   

JuNNi wrote:

Linux of course. And, if I might add, using vi and make.

OK, the "of course" applies only to me, but I didn't want
to switch to Windows to do FPGA development so I took the
time to figure out what ISE was doing under the covers and
found that all the real work is done by programs that can
be invoked at the command line. Eventually I was able to
even build a makefile for my project.

I wrote an article for Nuts & Volts magazine describing how
to use command line tools and makefiles for FPGA development.
The article is at
http://www.demandperipherals.com/docs/CmdLineFPGA.pdf


I had a little trouble getting the proprietary JTAG drivers
to work under Linux, so when I designed my board (Baseboard4)
I made it so you could download the FPGA code to a USB-serial
port using just a 'cat' command.


It turns out that the command line approach works as well
under Windows as it does under Linux, if that is of any use
to you.


thanks
Bob Smith

Tue Mar 02, 2010 5:22 pm   

JuNNi wrote:

Linux of course. And, if I might add, using vi and make.

OK, the "of course" applies only to me, but I didn't want
to switch to Windows to do FPGA development so I took the
time to figure out what ISE was doing under the covers and
found that all the real work is done by programs that can
be invoked at the command line. Eventually I was able to
even build a makefile for my project.

I wrote an article for Nuts & Volts magazine describing how
to use command line tools and makefiles for FPGA development.
The article is at
http://www.demandperipherals.com/docs/CmdLineFPGA.pdf


I had a little trouble getting the proprietary JTAG drivers
to work under Linux, so when I designed my board (Baseboard4)
I made it so you could download the FPGA code to a USB-serial
port using just a 'cat' command.


It turns out that the command line approach works as well
under Windows as it does under Linux, if that is of any use
to you.


thanks
Bob Smith

Thu Mar 04, 2010 9:14 pm   

On Mar 2, 8:14 am, Bob Smith <bsm...@linuxtoys.org> wrote:

Bob,

XST supports having the 'run' command in a script file, so the echo-

$.02,
RK