Which board to buy? Status of open source tools?

Howdy all,

I'm looking to get an FPGA development board sometime soon.  When I
was in college, I played with what was probably the Xess XSB-300E (fun
stuff: we made a  PCMCIA interface and plugged it into an iPaq... but
that's another story).  That's WAY outside of my price range (<
$200US), but the XSA-50 doesn't look too bad.  Any comments on that
one?  Also, I found this
(www.nuhorizons.com/products/xilinx/spartan3/development-board.html),
which looks considerably better to me, especially since my main
prospective project would benefit from a large amount of fast RAM. 
Any advice?  Is there anything else in the sub-$200 I should look at?

Also, what's the status of open source tools?  (I like to tinker on
the software end of things, too, and I have a bad case of PowerBook
envy, and I haven't seen any software available other than x86 and
big-iron UNIX).  Can they go from VHDL/Verilog all the way to
downloading the file to the chip?  I see that compilation (Icarus
verilog) and downloading (found it in this group's FAQ) work, but what
about place and route?  Icarus' docs say it's a no-go for this; is
there anything else, or must I use the Xilinx tools?  (I guess I have
a Xilinx bias -- it's all I've used, and I don't see much else for
cheap development boards.)

Thanks for the help!
- Joel Hardy

> Also, what's the status of open source tools?  (I like to tinker on
> the software end of things, too, and I have a bad case of PowerBook
> envy, and I haven't seen any software available other than x86 and
> big-iron UNIX).  Can they go from VHDL/Verilog all the way to
> downloading the file to the chip?  I see that compilation (Icarus
> verilog) and downloading (found it in this group's FAQ) work, but what
> about place and route?  Icarus' docs say it's a no-go for this; is
> there anything else, or must I use the Xilinx tools?  (I guess I have
> a Xilinx bias -- it's all I've used, and I don't see much else for
> cheap development boards.)

Why bother with Open Source stuff when various incarnations of
commerical tools are free to use? Check out for the Xilinx WebPack:

http://www.xilinx.com/xlnx/xil_prodcat_landingpage.jsp?title=ISE+WebPack

Cheers,
JonB

deeng_temp@yahoo.com (Joel Hardy) wrote in message news:<91268129.0405062217.35c0b0cd@posting.google.com>...
> Howdy all,
> 
> I'm looking to get an FPGA development boarXess XSB-300E (fun
> stuff: we made a  PCMCIA interface and plugged it into an iPaq... but
> that's another story).  That's WAY outside of my price range (<
> $200US), but the XSA-50 doesn't lookd sotoo bad.  Any comments on that
> one?  Also, I found thisprobably the  anything else in the sub-$200 I should look at?
> 
> Also, what's the status of open source tools?  (I like to tinker on
> the software end of things, too, and I have a bad case of PowerBook
> envy, and I haven't seen any software available o
> (www.nuhorizons.com/products/xilinx/spartan3/development-board.html),
> which looks considerably better to me, especially since my main
> prospective project would benefit from a large amount of fast RAM. 
> Any advice?  Is there metime soon.  When I
> was in college, I played with what was ther than x86 and
> big-iron UNIX).  Can they go from VHDL/Verilog all the way to
> downloading the file to the chip?  I see that compilation (Icarus
> verilog) and downloading (found it in this group's FAQ) work, but what
> about place and route?  Icarus' docs say it's a no-go for this; is
> there anything else, or must I use the Xilinx tools?  (I guess I have
> a Xilinx bias -- it's all I've used, and I don't see much else for
> cheap development boards.)
> 
> Thanks for the help!
> - Joel Hardy


Apart from entry level HDL simulation, I wouldn't expect too much from
open source for anything really difficult. The structure of FPGAs is
generally too complicated & proprietary for opensource. It was
different when everyone was doing ASIC & polygon design, then anyone
could write code that would work with any vendor.

You can run the free WebPack under VPC for Mac and take the speed hit,
interested to see a comparison of that v near equiv x86 running
native. I'd bet its 10x slower.

you can google geda, open source eda tools, there are quite a few out
there but mostly not much updated. Also hang out in the verilog/vhdl
NGs.

regards

johnjakson_usa_com

"Jon Beniston" <jon@beniston.com> wrote in message
news:e87b9ce8.0405070500.7c9c4bcc@posting.google.com...
> > Also, what's the status of open source tools?  (I like to tinker on
> > the software end of things, too, and I have a bad case of PowerBook
> > envy, and I haven't seen any software available other than x86 and
> > big-iron UNIX).  Can they go from VHDL/Verilog all the way to
> > downloading the file to the chip?  I see that compilation (Icarus
> > verilog) and downloading (found it in this group's FAQ) work, but what
> > about place and route?  Icarus' docs say it's a no-go for this; is
> > there anything else, or must I use the Xilinx tools?  (I guess I have
> > a Xilinx bias -- it's all I've used, and I don't see much else for
> > cheap development boards.)
>
> Why bother with Open Source stuff when various incarnations of
> commerical tools are free to use? Check out for the Xilinx WebPack:
>
> http://www.xilinx.com/xlnx/xil_prodcat_landingpage.jsp?title=ISE+WebPack
>

I think you misunderstand the point of Open Source - price is only one
aspect (and open source software is not necessarily free, although normally
you can find any given open source program somewhere for free downloading.
Frequently you can buy pre-packaged CD's, often with support, such as Linux
distributions or the OpenTech cdrom
http://www.opencores.org/projects.cgi/web/opentech/about ).

The original poster was looking for open source tools because he likes to
tinker with the software, and because he wants to run the software on
something other than an x86 machine.  That is possible with open source
software, but not with free closed source software.

Sites worth looking at are http://www.opencores.org ,
http://opencollector.org/ , and http://geda.seul.org .  But as another
poster pointed out, there are good reasons why place and route software
tends to be proprietry.

"Joel Hardy" <deeng_temp@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:91268129.0405062217.35c0b0cd@posting.google.com...
> Howdy all,
>
> I'm looking to get an FPGA development board sometime soon.  When I
> was in college, I played with what was probably the Xess XSB-300E (fun
> stuff: we made a  PCMCIA interface and plugged it into an iPaq... but
> that's another story).  That's WAY outside of my price range (<
> $200US), but the XSA-50 doesn't look too bad.  Any comments on that
> one?  Also, I found this
> (www.nuhorizons.com/products/xilinx/spartan3/development-board.html),
> which looks considerably better to me, especially since my main
> prospective project would benefit from a large amount of fast RAM.
> Any advice?  Is there anything else in the sub-$200 I should look at?
>
> Also, what's the status of open source tools?  (I like to tinker on
> the software end of things, too, and I have a bad case of PowerBook
> envy, and I haven't seen any software available other than x86 and
> big-iron UNIX).  Can they go from VHDL/Verilog all the way to
> downloading the file to the chip?  I see that compilation (Icarus
> verilog) and downloading (found it in this group's FAQ) work, but what
> about place and route?  Icarus' docs say it's a no-go for this; is
> there anything else, or must I use the Xilinx tools?  (I guess I have
> a Xilinx bias -- it's all I've used, and I don't see much else for
> cheap development boards.)
>
> Thanks for the help!
> - Joel Hardy

have a browse of http://www.digilentinc.com/index.html

xilinx webpack is free  www.xilinx.com/webpack

same with Quartus from altera
parallax were selling a few boards
also altera was selling some "student" boards
a while back

Alex

"Alex Gibson" <me@privacy.net> wrote in message
news:2g3pdhF3vva3U1@uni-berlin.de...
>
> have a browse of http://www.digilentinc.com/index.html
>
> xilinx webpack is free  www.xilinx.com/webpack
>
> same with Quartus from altera
> parallax were selling a few boards
> also altera was selling some "student" boards
> a while back
>
> Alex


here is the link for the altera uni program board
http://www.altera.com/education/univ/kits/unv-kits.html

"Alex Gibson" <me@privacy.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:2g3rpkF404s8U1@uni-berlin.de...
>
> "Alex Gibson" <me@privacy.net> wrote in message
> news:2g3pdhF3vva3U1@uni-berlin.de...
> >
> > have a browse of http://www.digilentinc.com/index.html
> >
> > xilinx webpack is free  www.xilinx.com/webpack
> >
> > same with Quartus from altera
> > parallax were selling a few boards
> > also altera was selling some "student" boards
> > a while back
> >
> > Alex
>
>
> here is the link for the altera uni program board
> http://www.altera.com/education/univ/kits/unv-kits.html
>
>
That board comes with a pretty 'old' (and 'small') FPGA.
A little bit above your $200 limit, but with a Cyclone EP1C6 or EP1C12
(Altera's new low cost devices) and 1 MB fast memory:
http://www.jopdesign.com/cyclone/index.jsp

> parallax were selling a few boards
> also altera was selling some "student" boards
> a while back
> 
> Alex

Here's a link to the parallax boards:

Cyclone 1C3 based, $195:
http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-parallax_cyclone_fstpck.html

Cyclone 1C20 based, $295:
http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-parallax_cyclone_smrtpck.html

Also check out the JOP board listed elsewhere in this thread, which is
another reasonably-priced Cylone board.

All Cyclone devices are supported by Quartus II web edition, which you
can download for free from:
http://www.altera.com/products/software/pld/products/quartus2/sof-quarwebmain.html

Quartus includes HDL synthesis, schematic entry, place and route,
static timing analysis, visualization, floorplanning tools, etc. 
Pretty much all you need to learn about FPGAs.

Larger list of Altera-based development boards (most more expensive
than you want though):
http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/kit-dev_platforms.jsp

Regards,

Vaughn
Altera

jon@beniston.com (Jon Beniston) wrote in message news:<e87b9ce8.0405070500.7c9c4bcc@posting.google.com>...
> > Also, what's the status of open source tools?  (I like to tinker on
> > the software end of things, too, and I have a bad case of PowerBook
> > envy, and I haven't seen any software available other than x86 and
> > big-iron UNIX).  Can they go from VHDL/Verilog all the way to
> > downloading the file to the chip?  I see that compilation (Icarus
> > verilog) and downloading (found it in this group's FAQ) work, but what
> > about place and route?  Icarus' docs say it's a no-go for this; is
> > there anything else, or must I use the Xilinx tools?  (I guess I have
> > a Xilinx bias -- it's all I've used, and I don't see much else for
> > cheap development boards.)
> 
> Why bother with Open Source stuff when various incarnations of
> commerical tools are free to use?

Because in the long term, an open-source tool chain can out perform a
commercial tool.  Case in point: how many Unix/C developers compile
with a commercial alternative to GCC?

Unfortunately, the track record of open-source FPGA implementation
tools has been dismal.  Icarus is the only open-source tool I know
that attempts Xilinx synthesis.  I believe it handles synthesis and
technology mapping, but has little, if no optimization.

I did start a Virtex2 packer/placer awhile back.  I got as far as
parsing the post-synthesis EDIF netlist and building a graph of FPGA
primitives.  The goal was to pack and place the CLBs, then update the
UCF with LOC constraints.  I still have the code lying around in case
anyone is interested.

BTW, Confluence can compile it for Mac X.  It will solved your design,
simulation, and verification problems, but for FPGA compilation,
you're still locked into commercial tools.

-Tom

Digilent Inc  (www.digilentinc.com) has several low cost boards mainly
used in academia but available to all. Soon they will be releasing a
Spartan-3 board and in a couple of months a Virtex-II Pro board.

Anna Acevedo - Manager
Xilinx University Program

Joel Hardy wrote:

> Howdy all,
>
> I'm looking to get an FPGA development board sometime soon.  When I
> was in college, I played with what was probably the Xess XSB-300E (fun
> stuff: we made a  PCMCIA interface and plugged it into an iPaq... but
> that's another story).  That's WAY outside of my price range (<
> $200US), but the XSA-50 doesn't look too bad.  Any comments on that
> one?  Also, I found this
> (www.nuhorizons.com/products/xilinx/spartan3/development-board.html),
> which looks considerably better to me, especially since my main
> prospective project would benefit from a large amount of fast RAM.
> Any advice?  Is there anything else in the sub-$200 I should look at?
>
> Also, what's the status of open source tools?  (I like to tinker on
> the software end of things, too, and I have a bad case of PowerBook
> envy, and I haven't seen any software available other than x86 and
> big-iron UNIX).  Can they go from VHDL/Verilog all the way to
> downloading the file to the chip?  I see that compilation (Icarus
> verilog) and downloading (found it in this group's FAQ) work, but what
> about place and route?  Icarus' docs say it's a no-go for this; is
> there anything else, or must I use the Xilinx tools?  (I guess I have
> a Xilinx bias -- it's all I've used, and I don't see much else for
> cheap development boards.)
>
> Thanks for the help!
> - Joel Hardy