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Pete Fraser
Guest
Wed Mar 03, 2010 3:48 pm
I'm going to be travelling soon, and will continue to
do FPGA design from the road. I'll need to get a
new laptop for this.
Any thoughts?
I think something based on the Core i7-620M might
be fast enough and low power, but they seem rare.
Looks like I'll probably end up with something with
a Core i7-720QM or a Core i7-820QM.
Anybody here have any experience with on of these
machines? Is there another processor I should be looking at?
The obvious OS with a new machine would be Windows 7,
64-bit, but I'm not sure my software will run on that.
I'm running ISE Foundation 10.1 (and don't plan on
upgrading quite yet). I also use Modelsim XE, but will
be upgrading to Modelsim PE or Aldec.
It's not clear what software runs on what OS. It seems
that I might be safer with 32-bit XP for the Modelsim
and the Xilinx software. Windows 7 Professional
seems to have a downgrade option to XP. Does that
mean I choose to install one or the other OS, or can
I install both and switch between them? 7 Pro seems
to have some sort of XP mode. Will that work for these
tools? Is there a performance penalty over a real XP
installation? Can I emulate XP 32-bit under W7 64-bit?
Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.
Pete
General Schvantzkoph
Guest
Wed Mar 03, 2010 4:21 pm
On Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:48:33 -0800, Pete Fraser wrote:
Quote:
I'm going to be travelling soon, and will continue to do FPGA design
from the road. I'll need to get a new laptop for this.
Any thoughts?
I think something based on the Core i7-620M might be fast enough and low
power, but they seem rare. Looks like I'll probably end up with
something with a Core i7-720QM or a Core i7-820QM.
Anybody here have any experience with on of these machines? Is there
another processor I should be looking at?
The obvious OS with a new machine would be Windows 7, 64-bit, but I'm
not sure my software will run on that. I'm running ISE Foundation 10.1
(and don't plan on upgrading quite yet). I also use Modelsim XE, but
will be upgrading to Modelsim PE or Aldec.
It's not clear what software runs on what OS. It seems that I might be
safer with 32-bit XP for the Modelsim and the Xilinx software. Windows 7
Professional seems to have a downgrade option to XP. Does that mean I
choose to install one or the other OS, or can I install both and switch
between them? 7 Pro seems to have some sort of XP mode. Will that work
for these tools? Is there a performance penalty over a real XP
installation? Can I emulate XP 32-bit under W7 64-bit?
Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.
Pete
The most important thing for the hardware is cache size and RAM. Get 8G
of RAM and make sure that you don't get a bargain processor with an
undersized cache.
As for the OS, my suggestion would be to use 64 bit Fedora 12. CAE tools
have been running on 64 bit Linux for years so they are completely
stable. I use both Altera and Xilinx tools on Fedora. ModelSim runs on 64
bit Linux also and of course NCsim and VCS are Linux only. The iCore7 has
hardware virtualization support and Fedora 12 comes with KVM built in so
you can run multiple VMs painlessly. I run both XP and CentOS5.4 VMs on
top of Fedora, the performance is very close to native, I've benchmarked
CentOS and it's at least 95% of native speed. I haven't benchmarked XP
but it feels very fast as long as you use Rdesktop to access it instead
of the console. If you need to run Windows CAE tools for some reason the
advantage of using a VM is that you can have more then one VM which gets
around XPs 3G total memory limit, although you would still have that
limit for each application. Obviously I don't recommend using XP for
anything more intense then MS Word, CAE tools should be run on Linux.
John_H
Guest
Wed Mar 03, 2010 5:07 pm
On Mar 3, 9:48 am, "Pete Fraser" <pfra...@covad.net> wrote:
Quote:
I'm going to be travelling soon, and will continue to
do FPGA design from the road. I'll need to get a
new laptop for this.
Any thoughts?
Since you're on ISE 10.1, there's no support for multi-threading.
Going with the higher speed i7-620M would give you the best bang for
your buck until or unless you upgrade ISE. While 11.2 introduced
multi-threading for placement, routing won't be multi-threaded until
12.x sometime according to one Xilinx Answer.
Multi-threading is great when software's designed for it. We've
stepped back from highest-speed processors in favor of more cores to
leverage the performance. While I appreciate being able to check
email during a place & route, I have yet to truly utilize the 8
threads across 4 cores in my desktop i7.
Do you want a laptop to perform better now or to perform better in a
year or two?
I can provide no guidance on operating system.
emeb
Guest
Wed Mar 03, 2010 6:20 pm
On Mar 3, 7:48 am, "Pete Fraser" <pfra...@covad.net> wrote:
Quote:
I'm going to be travelling soon, and will continue to
do FPGA design from the road. I'll need to get a
new laptop for this.
Any thoughts?
I think something based on the Core i7-620M might
be fast enough and low power, but they seem rare.
Looks like I'll probably end up with something with
a Core i7-720QM or a Core i7-820QM.
Anybody here have any experience with on of these
machines? Is there another processor I should be looking at?
The obvious OS with a new machine would be Windows 7,
64-bit, but I'm not sure my software will run on that.
I'm running ISE Foundation 10.1 (and don't plan on
upgrading quite yet). I also use Modelsim XE, but will
be upgrading to Modelsim PE or Aldec.
It's not clear what software runs on what OS. It seems
that I might be safer with 32-bit XP for the Modelsim
and the Xilinx software. Windows 7 Professional
seems to have a downgrade option to XP. Does that
mean I choose to install one or the other OS, or can
I install both and switch between them? 7 Pro seems
to have some sort of XP mode. Will that work for these
tools? Is there a performance penalty over a real XP
installation? Can I emulate XP 32-bit under W7 64-bit?
Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.
Pete
What size of designs are you working on? FWIW, I've had good luck
doing smaller stuff in WinXP running from the Bootcamp partition on a
MacBook using VMware. I've also gotten stuff built on an EEE901A with
WebPack 10.1 under EEEbuntu.
Eric
Jason Thibodeau
Guest
Wed Mar 03, 2010 9:13 pm
On 03/03/2010 11:20 AM, emeb wrote:
Quote:
On Mar 3, 7:48 am, "Pete Fraser"<pfra...@covad.net> wrote:
I'm going to be travelling soon, and will continue to
do FPGA design from the road. I'll need to get a
new laptop for this.
Any thoughts?
I think something based on the Core i7-620M might
be fast enough and low power, but they seem rare.
Looks like I'll probably end up with something with
a Core i7-720QM or a Core i7-820QM.
Anybody here have any experience with on of these
machines? Is there another processor I should be looking at?
The obvious OS with a new machine would be Windows 7,
64-bit, but I'm not sure my software will run on that.
I'm running ISE Foundation 10.1 (and don't plan on
upgrading quite yet). I also use Modelsim XE, but will
be upgrading to Modelsim PE or Aldec.
It's not clear what software runs on what OS. It seems
that I might be safer with 32-bit XP for the Modelsim
and the Xilinx software. Windows 7 Professional
seems to have a downgrade option to XP. Does that
mean I choose to install one or the other OS, or can
I install both and switch between them? 7 Pro seems
to have some sort of XP mode. Will that work for these
tools? Is there a performance penalty over a real XP
installation? Can I emulate XP 32-bit under W7 64-bit?
Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.
Pete
What size of designs are you working on? FWIW, I've had good luck
doing smaller stuff in WinXP running from the Bootcamp partition on a
MacBook using VMware. I've also gotten stuff built on an EEE901A with
WebPack 10.1 under EEEbuntu.
Eric
I think it is important to note the size of your designs. I actually use
an HP mini 210HD for a lot of my designs. I run Fedora 12, and ISE 11.1.
Sure its not as speedy as can be, but it gets the job done.
--
Jason Thibodeau
www.jayt.org
Pete Fraser
Guest
Wed Mar 03, 2010 10:19 pm
"Jason Thibodeau" <jason.p.thibodeau_at_gmail.com> wrote in message
news:hmmfsq$gvr$1_at_news.eternal-september.org...
Quote:
On 03/03/2010 11:20 AM, emeb wrote:
What size of designs are you working on? FWIW, I've had good luck
doing smaller stuff in WinXP running from the Bootcamp partition on a
MacBook using VMware. I've also gotten stuff built on an EEE901A with
WebPack 10.1 under EEEbuntu.
I think it is important to note the size of your designs. I actually use
an HP mini 210HD for a lot of my designs. I run Fedora 12, and ISE 11.1.
Sure its not as speedy as can be, but it gets the job done.
It varies.
My current design is very small (XC3S250E).
Mostly I design with XC5VSX50T, but I'm a consultant, so it's whatever the
client wants.
Typically the SX50T is a nice sweet spot for price / performance for video
processing.
My current project is audio, hence the tiny part.
Pete
rickman
Guest
Thu Mar 04, 2010 4:57 am
On Mar 3, 4:19 pm, "Pete Fraser" <pfra...@covad.net> wrote:
Quote:
"Jason Thibodeau" <jason.p.thibod...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:hmmfsq$gvr$1_at_news.eternal-september.org...
On 03/03/2010 11:20 AM, emeb wrote:
What size of designs are you working on? FWIW, I've had good luck
doing smaller stuff in WinXP running from the Bootcamp partition on a
MacBook using VMware. I've also gotten stuff built on an EEE901A with
WebPack 10.1 under EEEbuntu.
I think it is important to note the size of your designs. I actually use
an HP mini 210HD for a lot of my designs. I run Fedora 12, and ISE 11.1..
Sure its not as speedy as can be, but it gets the job done.
It varies.
My current design is very small (XC3S250E).
Mostly I design with XC5VSX50T, but I'm a consultant, so it's whatever the
client wants.
Typically the SX50T is a nice sweet spot for price / performance for video
processing.
My current project is audio, hence the tiny part.
My personal preference is to optimize the part I deal with, the LCD.
My main requirement in the laptop I bought was a 17" screen and I
pretty much always go for the low price. I got a deal on a unit being
discontinued even though it has an AMD processor. The only
shortcoming is the small battery so it only runs and hour and a half
on battery. I spend hours writing code and looking at simulations,
but the time spent crunching the design or running the simulation is a
very small percentage of that.
For what you will pay for an i7 laptop you can by a low end unit today
and in two years also buy the i7 you are looking at now. So think of
it this way, the design software does not require so much more than it
did two years ago. So the low end laptop you buy today is more than
adequate for the job! If you later need the i7 laptop for some big
job you can buy one then for a lot less or an even better one for the
same price.
On the other hand, I suggest that you spend time and money on a backup
procedure and use it religiously. No machine is immune from hard
drive crashes and a laptop is especially bad. Worse, if you are
traveling with it, it can be stolen. So make sure your backups are
separate and secure. US Mail will safely transport CD/DVDs to the
repository of your choice.
BTW, for a simulator I find the Aldec software to be good. I seem to
have very little trouble with it while every version of Modelsim I've
ever used seems to have at least one problem, a memory leak (or so I
suspect) that crashes the program after some arbitrary amount of
time. But then I haven't used Modelsim in three or four years.
Rick
Adam Górski
Guest
Thu Mar 04, 2010 1:42 pm
Pete Fraser pisze:
Quote:
I'm going to be travelling soon, and will continue to
do FPGA design from the road. I'll need to get a
new laptop for this.
Any thoughts?
I think something based on the Core i7-620M might
be fast enough and low power, but they seem rare.
Looks like I'll probably end up with something with
a Core i7-720QM or a Core i7-820QM.
Anybody here have any experience with on of these
machines? Is there another processor I should be looking at?
The obvious OS with a new machine would be Windows 7,
64-bit, but I'm not sure my software will run on that.
I'm running ISE Foundation 10.1 (and don't plan on
upgrading quite yet). I also use Modelsim XE, but will
be upgrading to Modelsim PE or Aldec.
It's not clear what software runs on what OS. It seems
that I might be safer with 32-bit XP for the Modelsim
and the Xilinx software. Windows 7 Professional
seems to have a downgrade option to XP. Does that
mean I choose to install one or the other OS, or can
I install both and switch between them? 7 Pro seems
to have some sort of XP mode. Will that work for these
tools? Is there a performance penalty over a real XP
installation? Can I emulate XP 32-bit under W7 64-bit?
Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.
Pete
Use Remote desktop or similar .
You can have really powerful PC for fpga compilation this way.
If you have inet connection of course.
Adam
kkoorndyk
Guest
Thu Mar 04, 2010 4:10 pm
On Mar 3, 4:19 pm, "Pete Fraser" <pfra...@covad.net> wrote:
Quote:
"Jason Thibodeau" <jason.p.thibod...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:hmmfsq$gvr$1_at_news.eternal-september.org...
On 03/03/2010 11:20 AM, emeb wrote:
What size of designs are you working on? FWIW, I've had good luck
doing smaller stuff in WinXP running from the Bootcamp partition on a
MacBook using VMware. I've also gotten stuff built on an EEE901A with
WebPack 10.1 under EEEbuntu.
I think it is important to note the size of your designs. I actually use
an HP mini 210HD for a lot of my designs. I run Fedora 12, and ISE 11.1..
Sure its not as speedy as can be, but it gets the job done.
It varies.
My current design is very small (XC3S250E).
Mostly I design with XC5VSX50T, but I'm a consultant, so it's whatever the
client wants.
Typically the SX50T is a nice sweet spot for price / performance for video
processing.
My current project is audio, hence the tiny part.
Pete
Some things to consider:
http://www.xilinx.com/ise/ossupport/index.htm
http://www.xilinx.com/ise/products/memory.htm
Note the memory requirements for the larger devices.
rickman
Guest
Fri Mar 05, 2010 12:59 am
On Mar 4, 7:42 am, Adam Górski <totutousungors...@malpawp.pl> wrote:
Quote:
Pete Fraser pisze:
I'm going to be travelling soon, and will continue to
do FPGA design from the road. I'll need to get a
new laptop for this.
Any thoughts?
I think something based on the Core i7-620M might
be fast enough and low power, but they seem rare.
Looks like I'll probably end up with something with
a Core i7-720QM or a Core i7-820QM.
Anybody here have any experience with on of these
machines? Is there another processor I should be looking at?
The obvious OS with a new machine would be Windows 7,
64-bit, but I'm not sure my software will run on that.
I'm running ISE Foundation 10.1 (and don't plan on
upgrading quite yet). I also use Modelsim XE, but will
be upgrading to Modelsim PE or Aldec.
It's not clear what software runs on what OS. It seems
that I might be safer with 32-bit XP for the Modelsim
and the Xilinx software. Windows 7 Professional
seems to have a downgrade option to XP. Does that
mean I choose to install one or the other OS, or can
I install both and switch between them? 7 Pro seems
to have some sort of XP mode. Will that work for these
tools? Is there a performance penalty over a real XP
installation? Can I emulate XP 32-bit under W7 64-bit?
Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.
Pete
Use Remote desktop or similar .
You can have really powerful PC for fpga compilation this way.
If you have inet connection of course.
Adam
Way back when, this software was purchased (PC Anywhere sticks in my
mind). Then I believe MS included it with WinXP, that was how IT used
to "fix" my PC. But I see now it is back to being commercial
software. This this software different somehow than the stuff they
had in WinXP or is that gone again?
Rick
mac
Guest
Fri Mar 05, 2010 3:32 am
Quote:
What size of designs are you working on? FWIW, I've had good luck
doing smaller stuff in WinXP running from the Bootcamp partition on a
MacBook using VMware. I've also gotten stuff built on an EEE901A with
WebPack 10.1 under EEEbuntu.
I've also used a small Macbook for samll designs running Ubuntu in a VM.
The nice thing about running ISE on Linux is that you can ssh -X into
the VM and get it to display in the Mac's X server.
--
mac the naĆÆf
Adam Górski
Guest
Fri Mar 05, 2010 1:54 pm
rickman pisze:
Quote:
On Mar 4, 7:42 am, Adam Górski <totutousungors...@malpawp.pl> wrote:
Pete Fraser pisze:
I'm going to be travelling soon, and will continue to
do FPGA design from the road. I'll need to get a
new laptop for this.
Any thoughts?
I think something based on the Core i7-620M might
be fast enough and low power, but they seem rare.
Looks like I'll probably end up with something with
a Core i7-720QM or a Core i7-820QM.
Anybody here have any experience with on of these
machines? Is there another processor I should be looking at?
The obvious OS with a new machine would be Windows 7,
64-bit, but I'm not sure my software will run on that.
I'm running ISE Foundation 10.1 (and don't plan on
upgrading quite yet). I also use Modelsim XE, but will
be upgrading to Modelsim PE or Aldec.
It's not clear what software runs on what OS. It seems
that I might be safer with 32-bit XP for the Modelsim
and the Xilinx software. Windows 7 Professional
seems to have a downgrade option to XP. Does that
mean I choose to install one or the other OS, or can
I install both and switch between them? 7 Pro seems
to have some sort of XP mode. Will that work for these
tools? Is there a performance penalty over a real XP
installation? Can I emulate XP 32-bit under W7 64-bit?
Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.
Pete
Use Remote desktop or similar .
You can have really powerful PC for fpga compilation this way.
If you have inet connection of course.
Adam
Way back when, this software was purchased (PC Anywhere sticks in my
mind). Then I believe MS included it with WinXP, that was how IT used
to "fix" my PC. But I see now it is back to being commercial
software. This this software different somehow than the stuff they
had in WinXP or is that gone again?
Remote desktop is included in WinXp Profesional and higher.
also in Vista Pro and higher.
Adam
rickman
Guest
Fri Mar 05, 2010 7:06 pm
On Mar 5, 7:54 am, Adam Górski <totutousungors...@malpawp.pl> wrote:
Quote:
rickman pisze:
On Mar 4, 7:42 am, Adam Górski <totutousungors...@malpawp.pl> wrote:
Pete Fraser pisze:
I'm going to be travelling soon, and will continue to
do FPGA design from the road. I'll need to get a
new laptop for this.
Any thoughts?
I think something based on the Core i7-620M might
be fast enough and low power, but they seem rare.
Looks like I'll probably end up with something with
a Core i7-720QM or a Core i7-820QM.
Anybody here have any experience with on of these
machines? Is there another processor I should be looking at?
The obvious OS with a new machine would be Windows 7,
64-bit, but I'm not sure my software will run on that.
I'm running ISE Foundation 10.1 (and don't plan on
upgrading quite yet). I also use Modelsim XE, but will
be upgrading to Modelsim PE or Aldec.
It's not clear what software runs on what OS. It seems
that I might be safer with 32-bit XP for the Modelsim
and the Xilinx software. Windows 7 Professional
seems to have a downgrade option to XP. Does that
mean I choose to install one or the other OS, or can
I install both and switch between them? 7 Pro seems
to have some sort of XP mode. Will that work for these
tools? Is there a performance penalty over a real XP
installation? Can I emulate XP 32-bit under W7 64-bit?
Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.
Pete
Use Remote desktop or similar .
You can have really powerful PC for fpga compilation this way.
If you have inet connection of course.
Adam
Way back when, this software was purchased (PC Anywhere sticks in my
mind). Then I believe MS included it with WinXP, that was how IT used
to "fix" my PC. But I see now it is back to being commercial
software. This this software different somehow than the stuff they
had in WinXP or is that gone again?
Remote desktop is included in WinXp Profesional and higher.
also in Vista Pro and higher.
Adam
Vista *what* pro? I've got Vista Home Pro. Do I have this? I expect
not.
Rick
rickman
Guest
Fri Mar 05, 2010 7:08 pm
On Mar 5, 12:06 pm, rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:
Quote:
On Mar 5, 7:54 am, Adam Górski <totutousungors...@malpawp.pl> wrote:
rickman pisze:
On Mar 4, 7:42 am, Adam Górski <totutousungors...@malpawp.pl> wrote:
Pete Fraser pisze:
I'm going to be travelling soon, and will continue to
do FPGA design from the road. I'll need to get a
new laptop for this.
Any thoughts?
I think something based on the Core i7-620M might
be fast enough and low power, but they seem rare.
Looks like I'll probably end up with something with
a Core i7-720QM or a Core i7-820QM.
Anybody here have any experience with on of these
machines? Is there another processor I should be looking at?
The obvious OS with a new machine would be Windows 7,
64-bit, but I'm not sure my software will run on that.
I'm running ISE Foundation 10.1 (and don't plan on
upgrading quite yet). I also use Modelsim XE, but will
be upgrading to Modelsim PE or Aldec.
It's not clear what software runs on what OS. It seems
that I might be safer with 32-bit XP for the Modelsim
and the Xilinx software. Windows 7 Professional
seems to have a downgrade option to XP. Does that
mean I choose to install one or the other OS, or can
I install both and switch between them? 7 Pro seems
to have some sort of XP mode. Will that work for these
tools? Is there a performance penalty over a real XP
installation? Can I emulate XP 32-bit under W7 64-bit?
Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.
Pete
Use Remote desktop or similar .
You can have really powerful PC for fpga compilation this way.
If you have inet connection of course.
Adam
Way back when, this software was purchased (PC Anywhere sticks in my
mind). Then I believe MS included it with WinXP, that was how IT used
to "fix" my PC. But I see now it is back to being commercial
software. This this software different somehow than the stuff they
had in WinXP or is that gone again?
Remote desktop is included in WinXp Profesional and higher.
also in Vista Pro and higher.
Adam
Vista *what* pro? I've got Vista Home Pro. Do I have this? I expect
not.
Rick
Doh! Nevermind. I have Vista Home *Premium*. The business version
is Vista Professional which is what you said...
Rick
HT-Lab
Guest
Sat Mar 06, 2010 10:52 am
"Adam Górski" <totutousungorskia_at_malpawp.pl> wrote in message
news:hmqv2n$5qr$1_at_atlantis.news.neostrada.pl...
Quote:
rickman pisze:
On Mar 4, 7:42 am, Adam Górski <totutousungors...@malpawp.pl> wrote:
Pete Fraser pisze:
...>>> Use Remote desktop or similar .
You can have really powerful PC for fpga compilation this way.
If you have inet connection of course.
Adam
Way back when, this software was purchased (PC Anywhere sticks in my
mind). Then I believe MS included it with WinXP, that was how IT used
to "fix" my PC. But I see now it is back to being commercial
software. This this software different somehow than the stuff they
had in WinXP or is that gone again?
Remote desktop is included in WinXp Profesional and higher.
also in Vista Pro and higher.
Just as a warning a number of Flexlm based software is blocking remote desktop
so you won't be able to run a node-locked license using remote desktop. VNC and
others work fine,
Hans
www.ht-lab.com
Quote:
Adam
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