Suse 9.1 Linux and Xilinx ISE 6.2i

Hello,

I just installed Xilinx ISE 6.2i on a Linux box and it is sluggish as 
anything.  Does anyone know why? I am running on a P4 1.7GHz w/ 1GB of 
RAM.  On windows, it is much more zippy. Could it be the gui toolkit 
that Xilinx is using (it seems like JAVA.......slow as a slug....)?

Thanks.


Salman

salman sheikh wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I just installed Xilinx ISE 6.2i on a Linux box and it is sluggish as 
> anything.  Does anyone know why? I am running on a P4 1.7GHz w/ 1GB of 
> RAM.  On windows, it is much more zippy. Could it be the gui toolkit 
> that Xilinx is using (it seems like JAVA.......slow as a slug....)?

Well, I run ISE 6.1i on a dual Opteron 244 w/ 3GIG of DRAM. Just
starting the ISE project manager takes 15+ seconds. And it's amazing
that such a fast machine can feel so slow. impact is also embarassingly
slow to start up.

It looks like JAVA widgets, although I've also seen hints of
compatibility libraries in use. I'm not privy.

The GUI stuff really is gawd-awful slow, but other than fpga_editor
and iMPACT, I stick with command line tools. My impression there
is that the command line tools work just fine.

-- 
Steve Williams                "The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
steve at icarus.com           But I have promises to keep,
http://www.icarus.com         and lines to code before I sleep,
http://www.picturel.com       And lines to code before I sleep."

salman sheikh wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I just installed Xilinx ISE 6.2i on a Linux box and it is sluggish as 
> anything.  Does anyone know why? I am running on a P4 1.7GHz w/ 1GB of 
> RAM.  On windows, it is much more zippy. Could it be the gui toolkit 
> that Xilinx is using (it seems like JAVA.......slow as a slug....)?
> 

Oddly enough, running the Windows version of ISE under Wine/Linux is 
significantly more responsive than the Linux "native" version... sigh.


-- 
My real email is akamail.com@dclark (or something like that).

salman sheikh wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I just installed Xilinx ISE 6.2i on a Linux box and it is sluggish as 
> anything.  Does anyone know why? I am running on a P4 1.7GHz w/ 1GB of 
> RAM.  On windows, it is much more zippy. Could it be the gui toolkit 
> that Xilinx is using (it seems like JAVA.......slow as a slug....)?

I've been using the Windows version on Windows 2000, running under VMWare
emulation, on a Mandrake Linux OS.  Some people tell me it is slower than
running just a native Win OS and the application, but I don't seem to notice
the difference.  (Just one small data point.)

Jon

Duane Clark wrote:
> salman sheikh wrote:
>> I just installed Xilinx ISE 6.2i on a Linux box and it is sluggish as 
>> anything.  Does anyone know why? I am running on a P4 1.7GHz w/ 1GB of 
>> RAM.  On windows, it is much more zippy. Could it be the gui toolkit 
>> that Xilinx is using (it seems like JAVA.......slow as a slug....)?

> Oddly enough, running the Windows version of ISE under Wine/Linux is 
> significantly more responsive than the Linux "native" version... sigh.

I've noticed that things run faster under wine also, the native versions 
seem to have some horrid windowsesq gui toolkit that spends rather a lot 
of time doing DNS lookups for every window/widget it needs to draw.. I 
notice that the Java based Coregen is much more responsive that the rest 
of the system.

Commandline tools fly, we place and route on a duel hyperthreded xeon (4 
logical cpus) and setting 4 designs off in parallel gives impressive 
performace, made the time spent building large Makefiles worth while.

On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 08:39:17 -0400, salman sheikh wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I just installed Xilinx ISE 6.2i on a Linux box and it is sluggish as 
> anything.  Does anyone know why? I am running on a P4 1.7GHz w/ 1GB of 
> RAM.  On windows, it is much more zippy. Could it be the gui toolkit 
> that Xilinx is using (it seems like JAVA.......slow as a slug....)?
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> 
> Salman

I'm surprised that they ran on SUSE 9.1 at all. The GUI tools don't work
on Mandrake 10.0, I'm still using Mandrake 9.2 on my workstation because
of this. The only GUI tool I ever use is FPGA Editor and that works OK
even though I'm using an old machine, 500MHz PIII with 512M RAM. I do
everything else with CLI and that works fine. The thing that you
absolutely can't do is run the GUI tools remotely, the performance over
an ethernet is horrendous. Everything else I use, Cadence's NC,
Mentor's ModelSim, both work fine on Mandrake 10 and there is no
performance penalty when running them over a network. Hopefully Xilinx
will switch to a decent toolkit in future releases, one that isn't tied to
a particular distribution and that has reasonable performance.

>Commandline tools fly, we place and route on a duel hyperthreded xeon (4 
>logical cpus) and setting 4 designs off in parallel gives impressive 
>performace, made the time spent building large Makefiles worth while.

Makefiles are good anyway.  Think of them as documentation.  Beats
scraps of paper with notes about what you have to do in the GUI to
get the right answer.  Doubly so if some of the GUI flags are sticky
so you only have to do it "once" and it doesn't get added to the checklist.

-- 
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other mailboxes.  Please do not send unsolicited bulk e-mail or unsolicited
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These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's.  I hate spam.

General Schvantzkoph wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 08:39:17 -0400, salman sheikh wrote:
> 
> 
>>Hello,
>>
>>I just installed Xilinx ISE 6.2i on a Linux box and it is sluggish as 
>>anything.  Does anyone know why? I am running on a P4 1.7GHz w/ 1GB of 
>>RAM.  On windows, it is much more zippy. Could it be the gui toolkit 
>>that Xilinx is using (it seems like JAVA.......slow as a slug....)?
>>
>>Thanks.
>>
>>
>>Salman
> 
> 
> I'm surprised that they ran on SUSE 9.1 at all. The GUI tools don't work
> on Mandrake 10.0, I'm still using Mandrake 9.2 on my workstation because
> of this. The only GUI tool I ever use is FPGA Editor and that works OK
> even though I'm using an old machine, 500MHz PIII with 512M RAM. I do
> everything else with CLI and that works fine. The thing that you
> absolutely can't do is run the GUI tools remotely, the performance over
> an ethernet is horrendous. Everything else I use, Cadence's NC,
> Mentor's ModelSim, both work fine on Mandrake 10 and there is no
> performance penalty when running them over a network. Hopefully Xilinx
> will switch to a decent toolkit in future releases, one that isn't tied to
> a particular distribution and that has reasonable performance.
> 

I also couldn't run ISE 6.2i on Mandrake 10.0 but would be interested in 
trying under wine. Can some one point me to an install procedure to get 
in working under wine.

Thanks, Tom

Marc Kelly <marc@redbeard.demon.co.uk> wrote:

: Commandline tools fly, we place and route on a duel hyperthreded xeon (4 
: logical cpus) and setting 4 designs off in parallel gives impressive 
: performace, made the time spent building large Makefiles worth while.

I'd appreciated if you would post a simple command file.

Thanks

-- 
Uwe Bonnes                bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt
--------- Tel. 06151 162516 -------- Fax. 06151 164321 ----------

Uwe Bonnes wrote:

> Marc Kelly <marc@redbeard.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> : Commandline tools fly, we place and route on a duel hyperthreded xeon (4 
> : logical cpus) and setting 4 designs off in parallel gives impressive 
> : performace, made the time spent building large Makefiles worth while.
> 
> I'd appreciated if you would post a simple command file.


Makefiles/Perl/CSH/etc. are great at times for FPGA implementation, 
especially when you are doing something really unique with the way you 
are running the tools but if anyone wants to run the Xilinx tools from 
command-line, the easiest way is using xflow.  Xflow is a single command 
that can run the Xilinx tools from HDL code to bitstream and most 
everything in between including simulation netlisting.  An example 
command running xflow is the following:

xflow -implement high_effort -tsim modelsim_verilog <design>.edf

That command will take that EDIF file run it through all the of the 
implementation tools to take it through place and route with a high 
effort level, create a static timing report and create a timing 
simulation model for ModelSim in the Verilog language.  Or if you want 
to run synthesis to bitstream, you could try:

xflow -p xc2vp7fg456-6 -synth synplicity_vhdl -implement balanced 
-config bitgen <design_name>.prj

Here it will synthesize a VHDL project through Synplicity targeting a 
2VP7, implement the design using medium effort (balancing runtime and 
CPU effort) and then create a bitstream.  The prj file contains all of 
the VHDL files for synthesis.  There are many other ways to run and 
customize the tools.  You can also specify customized options for any 
part of the flow if the blanket options are not to your liking.

I thought I would share this as xflow has been around for a long time 
now but it seems not many know about it.  I use it quite a bit to run 
the tools, especially when  running the tools remotely (i.e. logging 
onto my Linux machine at work from home and running a quick nohup xflow 
run).


--  Brian