Stupid question

On Mon, 04 Apr 2005 19:48:58 +0100, Thomas Womack wrote:

> Is there any way of using the Xilinx toolchain on a Mac?
> 
> I have become spoiled by my Mac Mini, and unpacking my loud PC
> just to run place-and-route seems inelegant.
> 
> Tom

Take your PC, put Linux on it, install the Linux Xilinx tools, put it in
another room and then rlogin or ssh into it. The Mac will make a fine
X server. You can do all of your work from the Mac while the PC is safely
out of earshot.

Thomas Womack wrote:

> >The cost could not be the issue if you start using Altera devices
:-)
>
> This is probably both troll-bait and an FAQ, but what's the Altera
> equivalent of something like the Xess $199 XC3S1000 or $349 Avnet
> XC4VLX25?  (that is, a cheap board with a chip on it as large as
> the free tools support, and some quick-win peripherals)

> Tom

Funny how a $399 device ends up on a $349 board. (Source: Avnet's Part
Search) It might be better to look at device prices.

Karl.

Karl wrote:
> Thomas Womack wrote:
>
> > >The cost could not be the issue if you start using Altera devices
> :-)
> >
> > This is probably both troll-bait and an FAQ, but what's the Altera
> > equivalent of something like the Xess $199 XC3S1000 or $349 Avnet
> > XC4VLX25?  (that is, a cheap board with a chip on it as large as
> > the free tools support, and some quick-win peripherals)
>
> Funny how a $399 device ends up on a $349 board. (Source: Avnet's
Part
> Search) It might be better to look at device prices.

Howdy Karl,

Funny how you tried to take a pot shot rather than actually answering
his question.  He seemed to be genuinely interested in finding a
comparable Altera based eval board.

As for that price: assuming for a second that the single piece price on
the website is even accurate, I am sure that Avnet doesn't just buy one
part at a time, from themselves no less, to build eval boards.  Even
the 100 piece price ($313) that they list contains a huge amount of
Avnet markup.  And that's even considering that ES (pre-production)
parts tend to cost more than production parts.

I'm sure it would be the same situation for Stratix II.

   Marc

B. Joshua Rosen wrote:
> On Mon, 04 Apr 2005 19:48:58 +0100, Thomas Womack wrote:
> 
> 
>>Is there any way of using the Xilinx toolchain on a Mac?
>>
>>I have become spoiled by my Mac Mini, and unpacking my loud PC
>>just to run place-and-route seems inelegant.
>>
>>Tom
> 
> 
> Take your PC, put Linux on it, install the Linux Xilinx tools, put it in
> another room and then rlogin or ssh into it. The Mac will make a fine
> X server. You can do all of your work from the Mac while the PC is safely
> out of earshot.

Not if you want to run the EDK. On a Mac X display, drop-down menus 
appear at screen co-ords (0,0), and the 1st option is unselectable. Oh, 
and the EDK misbehaves when you get to the 'add peripherals' stage - you 
can never get past that screen.

Running using VNC from the linux box to the mac is better, but you still 
get lag and sometimes strange behaviour.

I've just bought a DVI KVM, so I can run the EDK on my Linux box with 
the output going to my gorgeous mac monitor - it's the only solution I 
can find that has no problems :-(

Oh, and a bog-standard 64-bit AMD box (2GHz) runs about 3x the speed of 
a dual 2GHz G5 box when running iverilog, so it'll be a *lot* faster 
than on a G4 Mac Mini. I love the form-factor of the mini, but a 
computing powerhouse it most certainly ain't. I'd say the AMD box would 
be ~10x the speed of the mini...

Simon.