xilinx or altera?

which one should I go in term of easy to learn and use, has more
support tool and low cost.
they both have web version of development software, is it enough to do
general work?

thanks

jetq88 wrote:
> which one should I go in term of easy to learn and use, has more
> support tool and low cost.
> they both have web version of development software, is it enough to do
> general work?

Xilnix and Altera (and Atmel, Lattice, Actel, etc) are all _companies_
with _families_ of FPGA products.

X and A are the top dogs and both provide very capable tools that are
"free" for a subset of their FPGA products. It's not clear what your
asking and it's naive to imagine that there would be a simple correct
answer (as both companies are in business and doing quite well).

Both Quartus II (Altera) and ISE WebPACK (Xilinx) are way beyond
"enough for general work"; you could make a living using nothing but
these tolos. If you're familiar with one, it will take little effort to
learn the other. Most likely what will drive your decision is the
availability of development kits.

IMO: I much prefer Quartus II, but the Spartan-3E Starter Kit offers by
far the best value (at $149).

Now, go design :-)

Tommy

jetq88 wrote:

> which one should I go in term of easy to learn and use, has more
> support tool and low cost.
> they both have web version of development software, is it enough to do
> general work?

You may as well ask whether to go with Christianity or Islamic faith! ;)

Regards,

-- 
Mark McDougall, Engineer
Virtual Logic Pty Ltd, <http://www.vl.com.au>
21-25 King St, Rockdale, 2216
Ph: +612-9599-3255 Fax: +612-9599-3266

Mark McDougall wrote:

> You may as well ask whether to go with Christianity or Islamic faith! ;)

The only meaningful responses you're likely to get are from people that
have reasonable *practical* experience with *both*!

Actually I'd be interested to know the preferences of people in this
category. I've done a few years work with Altera and have recently
cracked open ISE to play with a Spartan-3. I'm finding it an unpleasant
experience but I'm sure that I went through similar over the years when
getting my head around Quartus too?!? So I admit I'm biased atm...

Regards,

-- 
Mark McDougall, Engineer
Virtual Logic Pty Ltd, <http://www.vl.com.au>
21-25 King St, Rockdale, 2216
Ph: +612-9599-3255 Fax: +612-9599-3266

Mark McDougall wrote:
> Actually I'd be interested to know the preferences of people in this
> category. I've done a few years work with Altera and have recently
> cracked open ISE to play with a Spartan-3. I'm finding it an unpleasant
> experience but I'm sure that I went through similar over the years when
> getting my head around Quartus too?!? So I admit I'm biased atm...

I first _started_ with ISE long ago, but IMO Quartus II has always been
far more logical and user friendly. ISE is much better these days, but
its notion of "work flow" is just a PITA. Not to mention that ISE
appears to get buggier with every release, while I've hardly ever had
issues with Quartus II.

And thus the jihad began...

Tommy

I think you should choose Switzerland.  That is Lattice's fpga
offerings.  Their fpga families are broad and their web software
includes Synplify synthesis.  The interface is close to ISE and the sw
is very solid.


Tommy Thorn wrote:
> Mark McDougall wrote:
> > Actually I'd be interested to know the preferences of people in this
> > category. I've done a few years work with Altera and have recently
> > cracked open ISE to play with a Spartan-3. I'm finding it an unpleasant
> > experience but I'm sure that I went through similar over the years when
> > getting my head around Quartus too?!? So I admit I'm biased atm...
>
> I first _started_ with ISE long ago, but IMO Quartus II has always been
> far more logical and user friendly. ISE is much better these days, but
> its notion of "work flow" is just a PITA. Not to mention that ISE
> appears to get buggier with every release, while I've hardly ever had
> issues with Quartus II.
> 
> And thus the jihad began...
> 
> Tommy

jetq88 wrote:
> which one should I go in term of easy to learn and use, has more
> support tool and low cost.
> they both have web version of development software, is it enough to do
> general work?
> 
> thanks
> 

It depends on what you want to do, how you want to do it and, to no 
negligeable extent, your personnal preferences.

Altera has had PLLs in its FPGAs for a long time and they are fully 
supported by Altera's Quartus Web Edition. Xilinx introduced PLLs in the 
V5 family but these are not supported by ISE Webpack yet. If you curse 
DCMs (grainy clock adjustments) and swear by PLLs, Altera is the only 
"free" game in town.

Since you say this is for learning, I suggest you download both Quartus 
Web and ISE Webpack, try them for a while and THEN decide which side you 
prefer.

That said, I have yet to touch an Altera device. I have recently started 
using Quartus since I have an upcoming IP validation/integration job 
coming up and the initial tests will be done on a Cyclone-2.

As far as development software goes, ISE has more eye-candy, leaks 
memory and crashes much more often than I would like it to. For Quartus, 
the interface has a somewhat rougher feel to it and I have not played 
with it long enough to see how sturdy it is. On the ease-of-use side, I 
think both are about equally easy to use but ISE has become somewhat 
less intuitive over the last few versions.

Whichever side you pick, the rest is all about getting intimate with 
your chosen FPGA familyies' architecture and your synthesis tools to get 
the most out of the pair... or anything at all when you run into corner 
cases, synthesis bugs, tool crashes, etc. (Are these less common with 
Quartus?)

-- 
Daniel Sauvageau
Matrox Graphics Inc.
1155 St-Regis, Dorval, Qc, Canada
514-822-6000

jetq88 wrote:
> which one should I go in term of easy to learn and use, has more
> support tool and low cost.
> they both have web version of development software, is it enough to do
> general work?
> 
> thanks
> 

 From my experience I would suggest that you first try and get pricing 
for small order quantities. If X (A) parts are easily/readily available 
in small order quantities where you live then download the web tools and 
start coding.

The worst thing you can do is start coding for a particular 
manufacturers parts only to realise that they are not available where 
you live

Ben

Mark McDougall wrote:

> category. I've done a few years work with Altera and have recently
> cracked open ISE to play with a Spartan-3. I'm finding it an unpleasant
> experience but I'm sure that I went through similar over the years when
> getting my head around Quartus too?!? So I admit I'm biased atm...

I'm going through the same thing, except that I _clearly_ remember how
difficult I found it to use Altera's stuff. I think all this software
is used by such a tiny number of people that you're just expected to
get the ritual tattoos and piercings in order to join the cult that
understands it. Since the developer community for each product is so
small, usability is no priority at all.

I wrestled with ISE for more than an hour just trying to put down
something other than an ACC_16. At that time, I discovered that if you
open ISE at 1024x768 resolution, the controls autosize themselves in
such a way that the drop-down list to select a different part is
invisible.

I've yet to be convinced that the software is even functional...

zwsdotcom@gmail.com wrote:
> Mark McDougall wrote:
>
> > category. I've done a few years work with Altera and have recently
> > cracked open ISE to play with a Spartan-3. I'm finding it an unpleasant
> > experience but I'm sure that I went through similar over the years when
> > getting my head around Quartus too?!? So I admit I'm biased atm...
>
> I'm going through the same thing, except that I _clearly_ remember how
> difficult I found it to use Altera's stuff. I think all this software
> is used by such a tiny number of people that you're just expected to
> get the ritual tattoos and piercings in order to join the cult that
> understands it. Since the developer community for each product is so
> small, usability is no priority at all.
>
> I wrestled with ISE for more than an hour just trying to put down
> something other than an ACC_16. At that time, I discovered that if you
> open ISE at 1024x768 resolution, the controls autosize themselves in
> such a way that the drop-down list to select a different part is
> invisible.
>
> I've yet to be convinced that the software is even functional...

There are things to dislike in each vendor's tools. The download size
for the Xilinx webpack (full install - see below) is close on 1GByte -
that's not a typo. Although Quartus is smaller, the memory footprint to
do anything is horrendous.

The reason for a full download is that the web install fails regularly
with a message that the Xilinx server can not be found and perhaps I
should check my internet connection - the problem is with the Xilinx
servers, not my connection (I checked and it happens multiple times).

That said, there are other things - Altera insists on knowing your
ethernet card MAC address (old habits die hard) even for the freely
downloadable version, and they install a daemon (service in W2K) that
does not need to be there. (jtagserver is the name of said service).

All in all, the tools are roughly the same - Altera can have ease of
use (once you get used to them), but far fewer freebies (at least as
far as I can find) and horrendous performance (even on this system with
2GByte physical DDR); Xilinx tools have a less than natural flow, but I
do like the fact that Xilinx ships FPGA Express.

I have had designs where the native tools could not fit a design where
FPGA Express could - it at least gives me another option.

So from my point of view, there's not much between the vendors when you
take everything into account.

Cheers

PeteS