Hi, I am a beginner at FPGA. I had a query that which platform is used for professional digital designs. Is it linux or windows?? --------------------------------------- Posted through http://www.FPGARelated.com
FPGA platform??
Started by ●February 22, 2010
Reply by ●February 22, 20102010-02-22
>Hi, I am a beginner at FPGA. I had a query that which platform is usedfor>professional digital designs. Is it linux or windows?? >All the places I have worked at (in UK) have used Windows. Some have also used Unix/Linux. I would be surprised if no Linux-only shops existed. --------------------------------------- Posted through http://www.FPGARelated.com
Reply by ●February 22, 20102010-02-22
JuNNi wrote:> Hi, I am a beginner at FPGA. I had a query that which platform is used for > professional digital designs. Is it linux or windows?? > > > > --------------------------------------- > Posted through http://www.FPGARelated.comHi, Altera support Vista 32 bit, XP 32 bit and some Linux. If you use the free web edition https://www.altera.com/support/software/download/altera_design/quartus_we/dnl-quartus_we.jsp on a modern fast PC (less that 2 years old) and with at least 2 GB of ram you should be fine for learning about FPGAs. James
Reply by ●February 23, 20102010-02-23
On 22 Feb., 14:12, "JuNNi" <m_junaid_muzam...@yahoo.com> wrote:> Hi, I am a beginner at FPGA. I had a query that which platform is used for > professional digital designs. Is it linux or windows??For normal FPGA Design Windows is common, as some (backend-) FPGA tools are either Windows only or show better performance under Windows. For general digital design (and especially frontend of code entry and simulation) professionals use often Linux/Solaris when it comes to complex and large designs. One reason for using Linux/Solaris is, that handling of large designs requires often more than 2GB memory, but especially those tools mentioned above that are Windows only or show bad performance under Linux tend to be Win32 only or show bad performance in Win64 server systems. A rule of thumb: simple free starter kits are more on the Windows side, professional tools could be better used on Linux Server. bye Thomas
Reply by ●February 23, 20102010-02-23
Thomas Stanka <usenet_nospam_valid@stanka-web.de> writes:> For normal FPGA Design Windows is common, as some (backend-) FPGA > tools are either Windows only or show better performance under > Windows.Which tools do you have in mind here?> For general digital design (and especially frontend of code entry and > simulation) professionals use often Linux/Solaris when it comes to > complex and large designs.Especially if you're using Synopsys tools. Petter -- A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
Reply by ●February 24, 20102010-02-24
On 23 Feb., 15:52, Petter Gustad <newsmailco...@gustad.com> wrote:> Thomas Stanka <usenet_nospam_va...@stanka-web.de> writes: > > For normal FPGA Design Windows is common, as some (backend-) FPGA > > tools are either Windows only or show better performance under > > Windows. > > Which tools do you have in mind here?AFAIK you get the free Modelsim version only for Windows(32bit) from Xilinx. The free suite for Altera (Webedition) seems to be windows only, linux requires licensing. Several parts of the design suites ISPLever are Windows only, Programming Actel FPGAs is only possible using Windows... The versions of ISE I used showed not that good performance on linux. Quartus Linux is only titled Beta, never worked with, but guess the same here. Actel Designer has bad performance on Linux as well. bye Thomas
Reply by ●February 25, 20102010-02-25
Thomas Stanka <usenet_nospam_valid@stanka-web.de> writes:> On 23 Feb., 15:52, Petter Gustad <newsmailco...@gustad.com> wrote: >> Thomas Stanka <usenet_nospam_va...@stanka-web.de> writes: >> > For normal FPGA Design Windows is common, as some (backend-) FPGA >> > tools are either Windows only or show better performance under >> > Windows. >> >> Which tools do you have in mind here? > > AFAIK you get the free Modelsim version only for Windows(32bit) from > Xilinx. The free suite for Altera (Webedition) seems to be windows > only, linux requires licensing.Yes this is true, even though some of the reasons are political. Modelsim ASE is included with Quartus under Linux at no extra cost. Altera has to pay royalties for their Mainwin library hence they will not give it away, but they have a Qt based GUI now so I would expect to see a free Quartus Webedition for Linux soon. The free Modelsim versions are running at a reduced speed under both Windows and Linux. On the other hand the Synopsys VCS simulator is not available for Windows.> Several parts of the design suites ISPLever are Windows only, > Programming Actel FPGAs is only possible using Windows...Does that mean you can't generate a SVF file either?> The versions of ISE I used showed not that good performance on linux.Hmm. I don't use the GUI that much (other than for floorplanning and signaltap/chipscope) so most of my builds are done in batch and I have not noticed any reduced performance under Linux.> Quartus Linux is only titled Beta, never worked with, but guess the > same here.Quartus for Linux is not beta. The recently released Qt GUI front-end is beta, but not the regular Quartus version. The performance of Linux (Quartus 9.x) is the same as for Windows. Petter -- A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
Reply by ●February 25, 20102010-02-25
On Feb 23, 8:13 am, Thomas Stanka <usenet_nospam_va...@stanka-web.de> wrote:> On 22 Feb., 14:12, "JuNNi" <m_junaid_muzam...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > For general digital design (and especially frontend of code entry and > simulation) professionals use often Linux/Solaris when it comes to > complex and large designs. >In fact, Altera dropped support for Solaris on SPARC since version 8.0 (2 years ago?). Solaris on x386/AMD64 was never supported. I don't follow Xilinx all that closely but I think their situation with regard to Solaris support is identical to Altera's.
Reply by ●February 26, 20102010-02-26
On 25 Feb., 11:21, Petter Gustad <newsmailco...@gustad.com> wrote:> On the other hand the Synopsys VCS simulator is not available for > Windows.Last time I used Synopsys Simulator is 10 years ago, but I don't missed it since then :).> > Several parts of the design suites ISPLever are Windows only, > > Programming Actel FPGAs is only possible using Windows... > > Does that mean you can't generate a SVF file either?You can generate a programming file under linux. But you can't use the programmer (and programmer SW) neither for Antifuse nor for Flash- based. The core generator for more complex cores(PCI and so on) also requires Windows. And as already stated, the actual version of designer under Linux is to slow to do reasonable layout/floorplan of complex designs. bye Thomas
Reply by ●February 26, 20102010-02-26
Thomas Stanka <usenet_nospam_valid@stanka-web.de> writes:> Last time I used Synopsys Simulator is 10 years ago, but I don't > missed it since then :).I've used VCS since it was first released by Chronologic until two years ago, since then I've used ModelSim and I really miss VCS...>> > Several parts of the design suites ISPLever are Windows only, >> > Programming Actel FPGAs is only possible using Windows... >> >> Does that mean you can't generate a SVF file either? > > You can generate a programming file under linux. But you can't use the > programmer (and programmer SW) neither for Antifuse nor for Flash- > based. > The core generator for more complex cores(PCI and so on) also requires > Windows. > And as already stated, the actual version of designer under Linux is > to slow to do reasonable layout/floorplan of complex designs.It's probably a tough job for the smaller companies to develop multi-platform software since they don't have the resources that Xilinx and Altera has. However, it could have been interesting if some of the smaller vendors would open source their software to get some community help. But some of their software might be based upon some commercial packages outside their control, which makes it impossible unless it's re-written. Petter -- A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
