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

On Mar 3, 9:48=A0am, "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?

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.

On Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:48:33 -0800, Pete Fraser
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


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.

On Mar 3, 7:48=A0am, "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

On 03/03/2010 11:20 AM, emeb wrote:
> 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

"Jason Thibodeau"
<j...@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:hmmfsq$gvr$1...@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 

On Mar 3, 4:19=A0pm, "Pete Fraser"
<pfra...@covad.net> wrote:
> "Jason Thibodeau" <jason.p.thibod...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:hmmfsq$gvr$1...@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 us=
e
> > 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 th=
e
> client wants.
> Typically the SX50T is a nice sweet spot for price / performance for vide=
o
> 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

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

On Mar 3, 4:19=A0pm, "Pete Fraser"
<pfra...@covad.net> wrote:
> "Jason Thibodeau" <jason.p.thibod...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:hmmfsq$gvr$1...@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 us=
e
> > 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 th=
e
> client wants.
> Typically the SX50T is a nice sweet spot for price / performance for vide=
o
> 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.

On Mar 4, 7:42=A0am, Adam G=F3rski
<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?

Rick