FPGA design under Mac OS X ?

Are there any FPGA design tools which will run under Mac OS X?

I've found that the Icarus Verilog simulator and synthesis tool
will run under OS X, but I'm not sure whether that's actually useful
for programming any current FPGA part.

Thanks.

-- 
Ron Nicholson   rhn AT nicholson DOT com   http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/ 
#include <canonical.disclaimer>        // only my own opinions, etc.

AFAIK no, and likely never I suspect.

The Mac has had and still has some EDA tools for IC layout (4+), PCB
(2+), spice simulation (few), opensource (GEDA etc)

but those were open to any technology or company.

FPGA is a lock in game, you choose your language and then your device &
vendor and you need a tool with intimate knowledge of the device which
can't be just encoded in a portable technology file as it was for ASIC
design.

I could imagine myself developing a platform neutral FPGA floorplanning
tool, probably use wxWidgets, maybe even use Java. While such a tool
could not have precise knowledge of FPGA slices, it could have a crude
enough model that would allow very responsive hand placing with
immediate DRC, and feedback about likely performance. It seems today
half of all delays are in the wiring and the current floorplanning
tools are hopeless for the guy like me that wants complete visual
control for some part of the layout. While the tools sort of work, the
cycle time for changing the floor plan and rechecking each step is
minutes when it should be <1s.

Input is another problem, the synthesis would still need to be done by
another tool, and that means timing layout driven synthesis. The output
would be pretty low level instances of LUTs. If the synthesis is using
layout to guide the synthesis, it defeats the whole manual driven
thing.

Output would be ucf file I guess.



So OSX is maybe 3% of the general market and probably even less in the
EE world, why would anyone even bother.

I know it xxxxx, I wouldn't mind getting a mini myself kind of matches
the other mini thing.

johnjakson at usa dot com

On Sun, 15 May 2005 04:57:06 +0000, Ronald H. Nicholson Jr. wrote:

> Are there any FPGA design tools which will run under Mac OS X?
> 
> I've found that the Icarus Verilog simulator and synthesis tool
> will run under OS X, but I'm not sure whether that's actually useful
> for programming any current FPGA part.
> 
> Thanks.

Get yourself a Linux machine (x86 obviously, not Linux on PPC) to run your
FPGA development environment. You can use the Mac as an X-Server, but
thats as close as you are going to be able to get. It's inconceivable that
the FPGA or CAE companies would add a third platform.  

"B. Joshua Rosen" <bjrosen@PleaseDontSpamMEpolybus.com> wrote in message 
news:pan.2005.05.15.11.54.37.465174@PleaseDontSpamMEpolybus.com...
> On Sun, 15 May 2005 04:57:06 +0000, Ronald H. Nicholson Jr. wrote:
>
>> Are there any FPGA design tools which will run under Mac OS X?
>>
>> I've found that the Icarus Verilog simulator and synthesis tool
>> will run under OS X, but I'm not sure whether that's actually useful
>> for programming any current FPGA part.
>>
>> Thanks.
>
> Get yourself a Linux machine (x86 obviously, not Linux on PPC) to run your
> FPGA development environment. You can use the Mac as an X-Server, but
> thats as close as you are going to be able to get. It's inconceivable that
> the FPGA or CAE companies would add a third platform.

What you mean like windows , linux and solaris ?
(Most current tools don't support solaris)

Shouldn't take to much work to go from linux to OSX
(depending on how they implemented the port)
I'd be happy to beta test.

It is interesting to see some work starting to be done with eclipse
and the GEF(graphical Editing Framework).
see http://www.eclipse.org/gef/overview.html?cvsroot=Tools_Project

Alex 

Alex Gibson wrote:
> "B. Joshua Rosen" <bjrosen@PleaseDontSpamMEpolybus.com> wrote in
message
> news:pan.2005.05.15.11.54.37.465174@PleaseDontSpamMEpolybus.com...
> >
> > Get yourself a Linux machine (x86 obviously, not Linux on PPC) to
run your
> > FPGA development environment. You can use the Mac as an X-Server,
but
> > thats as close as you are going to be able to get. It's
inconceivable that
> > the FPGA or CAE companies would add a third platform.
>
> What you mean like windows , linux and solaris ?
> (Most current tools don't support solaris)
>
> Shouldn't take to much work to go from linux to OSX
> (depending on how they implemented the port)

ModelSim runs under a wish shell on Windows and Linux and Solaris, so
it seems to me that the port would be rather painless.

Of course, look how long it took Mentor and Xilinx to support Linux.

> I'd be happy to beta test.

So would I.
 
-a

"B. Joshua Rosen" <bjrosen@PleaseDontSpamMEpolybus.com> writes:

> On Sun, 15 May 2005 04:57:06 +0000, Ronald H. Nicholson Jr. wrote:
> 
> > Are there any FPGA design tools which will run under Mac OS X?

> Get yourself a Linux machine (x86 obviously, not Linux on PPC) to run your
> FPGA development environment. You can use the Mac as an X-Server, but
> thats as close as you are going to be able to get. It's inconceivable that
> the FPGA or CAE companies would add a third platform.  

Well, Java could could be the common platform for the rest of the world.

MB
-- 
Michel BILLAUD                  billaud@labri.fr
LABRI-Universit&#4294967295; Bordeaux I     tel 05 4000 6922 / 05 5684 5792
351, cours de la Lib&#4294967295;ration     http://www.labri.fr/~billaud
33405 Talence  (FRANCE)     

On a sunny day (16 May 2005 20:52:12 +0200) it happened Michel Billaud
<billaud@labri.u-bordeaux.fr> wrote in <7zu0l3hulf.fsf@serveur5.labri.fr>:

>Well, Java could could be the common platform for the rest of the world.
But it would start rotating at a very slow speed.

In article <d66kr2$mmk$1@blue.rahul.net>,
Ronald H. Nicholson Jr. <rhn@mauve.rahul.net> wrote:
>Are there any FPGA design tools which will run under Mac OS X?
>
>I've found that the Icarus Verilog simulator and synthesis tool
>will run under OS X, but I'm not sure whether that's actually useful
>for programming any current FPGA part.
>

While I think that OSX would make a great FPGA (and EDA in general) 
platform, I wouldn't hold my breath for support from any of the FPGA 
companies.  

You could use open source simulators like Icarus and GHDL (for VHDL) on 
OSX (I use GHDL on my Powerbook) to verify your design, but when it comes 
to synthesis there really aren't any viable open source options and there 
won't likely ever be due to the proprietary nature of FPGAs (unless 
someone comes up with an open source FPGA architecture).

BTW: Why do I think that OSX would make a great EDA platform?
Less support issues than Linux because there aren't multiple distros to 
support.  [Don't get me wrong, I like Linux (I'm using it right now :). 
However, I'm wondering if Linux makes a good platform for 'closed source 
software' (it could if companies understood the Linux platform better).  
It's definately great for open source software where you 
install by compiling source (./configure;make;make install); but when the 
source isn't available it can be a pain (static linking or shipping 
libraries could really help, but it doesn't seem to happen).]

OSX is more solid than Windows as well.  This is especially important 
when you're talking about very large designs which might need to simulate 
for days, for example.  OSX is a flavor of BSD Unix, after all.

Apple also makes some very nice 'workstation-like' hardware (Dual 2.7MHz 
G5 with 2GB RAM makes a nice workstation.) And when Apple releases 
Cell-based machines the performance will be way ahead of anything 
Intel/AMD based. ;-)

...also a lot of software developers seem to be moving to Macs these 
days.  If you go to a conference like OSCON (O'Reilly Open Source 
Convention) one of the first things you notice is that about half of 
the attendees are using Powerbooks.  These are your bleeding-edge 
developers and they seem to be on to something.

But again, I doubt you'll ever see any support for OSX from Xilinx or 
Altera (or even from the EDA companies for that matter).

Phil

In article <pan.2005.05.15.11.54.37.465174@PleaseDontSpamMEpolybus.com>,
B. Joshua Rosen <bjrosen@PleaseDontSpamMEpolybus.com> wrote:
>On Sun, 15 May 2005 04:57:06 +0000, Ronald H. Nicholson Jr. wrote:
>
>> Are there any FPGA design tools which will run under Mac OS X?
>> 
>> I've found that the Icarus Verilog simulator and synthesis tool
>> will run under OS X, but I'm not sure whether that's actually useful
>> for programming any current FPGA part.
>> 
>> Thanks.
>
>Get yourself a Linux machine (x86 obviously, not Linux on PPC) to run your
>FPGA development environment. 


But even doing that is no guarantee.  Unfortunately, you need to be 
running a very specific Linux distro in many cases (ISE 7.1 is a case in 
point - I've yet to get it working acceptably well under Mandrake 10 or 
Debian.  I'm told that it should work better under Mandrake 10.1 - when I 
get a chance I'll try it.

> You can use the Mac as an X-Server, but
>thats as close as you are going to be able to get. It's inconceivable that
>the FPGA or CAE companies would add a third platform.  

Well Big EDA (your Mentors, Cadences, Synopsys-es :) support more than 3 
platforms already depending on the tool (Solaris, HPUX, Linux, Windows).  
I would imagine that it would be a lot easier to support OSX than it would 
be to support HPUX ;-)  (if you've ever had to support HPUX, you know what I 
mean)  But in general, you're right, they won't support another platform 
(OSX) unless they suddenly find a financially compelling reason to do so.

Phil

In article <1116263307.387705.217740@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>,
Andy Peters <Bassman59a@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Alex Gibson wrote:
>> "B. Joshua Rosen" <bjrosen@PleaseDontSpamMEpolybus.com> wrote in
>message
>> news:pan.2005.05.15.11.54.37.465174@PleaseDontSpamMEpolybus.com...
>> >
>> > Get yourself a Linux machine (x86 obviously, not Linux on PPC) to
>run your
>> > FPGA development environment. You can use the Mac as an X-Server,
>but
>> > thats as close as you are going to be able to get. It's
>inconceivable that
>> > the FPGA or CAE companies would add a third platform.
>>
>> What you mean like windows , linux and solaris ?
>> (Most current tools don't support solaris)
>>
>> Shouldn't take to much work to go from linux to OSX
>> (depending on how they implemented the port)
>
>ModelSim runs under a wish shell on Windows and Linux and Solaris, so
>it seems to me that the port would be rather painless.
>

Yes, the port for something which has a Tk GUI (like ModelSim) would be 
painless, however it would mean running QA on another platform and that 
wouldn't be painless.

>Of course, look how long it took Mentor and Xilinx to support Linux.
>
>> I'd be happy to beta test.
>
>So would I.

Me too.

However, when it comes to simulators there are already options available 
for both Verilog (Icarus) and VHDL (GHDL) simulation on OS X.  You can 
simulate your design just fine on OS X, but you can't get it synthesized 
and into your FPGA.

Phil