Does anyone have any experience of running Actel
Designer on Linux?

We currently use WinXP, and have recently been informed that if we used
Linux, then Designer would run 10x faster.  I would just like to see if
anyone out there can confirm this before trying to get a machine set up
with Linux.

Also since I'm talking about Linux, is there any preference as to which
distro is best for FPGA development?

Thanks

Neill.

Hi Neill,

I tried it on my Gentoo machine and failed miserably (java issue). If you 
want to try a distro I would suggest one of the free RedHat enterprise 
clones such as Whitebox and Centos. If designer runs 10x faster under Linux 
then I will build myself a RH box immediately since designer for ProASIC is 
sooooo slow :-)

Hans.
www.ht-lab.com

"Neill A" <n...@ewst.co.uk> wrote in message 
news:1...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Does anyone have any experience of running Actel Designer on Linux?
>
> We currently use WinXP, and have recently been informed that if we used
> Linux, then Designer would run 10x faster.  I would just like to see if
> anyone out there can confirm this before trying to get a machine set up
> with Linux.
>
> Also since I'm talking about Linux, is there any preference as to which
> distro is best for FPGA development?
>
> Thanks
>
> Neill.
> 

"Neill A" <n...@ewst.co.uk>
wrote:
> We currently use WinXP, and have recently been informed that if we used
> Linux, then Designer would run 10x faster.  I would just like to see if
> anyone out there can confirm this before trying to get a machine set up
> with Linux.

From who do you have this information? I used an old version under
Solaris. But the runtime for Solaris and Windows is quite bad
compareable du to the complete different HWs. The best thing for me
was the possibillity to use a batch workflow under Solaris.

bye Thomas

Well I finally got around to trying it out, but
didn't notice any real
difference.

The following summary gives an idea of the size of the design I tried
out:

Importer Summary
===============
Part-Package: APA600-BG456
        Core Slots:        21504
        RAM/FIFO Slots:       56
        I/O Slots:           356    (Globals: 4)   (PLLs: 2)

Core Cells:      11965  -->  Usage: 55.6 percent
RAM/FIFO Cells:      6  -->  Usage: 10.7 percent
IOs:               352  -->  Usage: 99.4 percent
PLLs:                2  -->  Usage: 100.0 percent

Constraints processed:
IO constraints:         351
Path constraints:         0
Placement constraints:    0
Net constraints:          4


I/O  Cells:                   Core cells:
                                          | Instances |  Gates |  Tiles
Input. IOs:        87           ----------|-----------|--------|-------
Bidir  IOs:        80      Logic          |   8777    |  20183 |   8777
Output IOs:       185      Storage        |   3185    |  25215 |   3188
Global IOs:         0      RAM/FIFO       |      6    |  54144 |     48
Internal Global:    0                     |           |        |
-----------------------         ----------|-----------|--------|-------
Total  IOs:       352        Total        |  11968    |  99542 |  12013


The windows machine used for the test was a Pentium 4 2.4GHz with 512MB
RAM running WIN XP SP2.

The Linux machine was an Athlon XP2200+ with 512MB RAM running CentOS 4
(RHEL 4 clone).

In both case the run time for layout was ~50 mins, so it seems the
information I received was clearly wrong.