User Constraint Files

Someone in a meetup group discussion is suggesting that there is a
level of interoperability between different brands of tools for the
User Constraint File (UCF).  I guess I never thought about it and just
assumed they would be proprietary.  The Lattice tools are based on the
same NeoCAD tools the Xilinx tools ar ebased on, so I am not surprised
by some degree of commonality.  But are Altera and Actel on the same
page?  Did they actually do something useful for engineers that might
not be in their own best interests?

I've seen that the PCB layout tools all have incompatible and mostly
binary file formats and have staunchly resisted efforts to change.  It
would seem they all write converters so you can change to their tool,
but they don't like in any way to help you to leave their tool.  I
would have expected this from the FPGA vendors as well.

Rick

Synopsys Design Constraint file seems to be supported by more and more EDA 
companies.

Hans
www.ht-lab.com

"rickman" <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:70bebb4a-15f8-4945-8506-c83cbcd59e1e@u10g2000yqk.googlegroups.com...
> Someone in a meetup group discussion is suggesting that there is a
> level of interoperability between different brands of tools for the
> User Constraint File (UCF).  I guess I never thought about it and just
> assumed they would be proprietary.  The Lattice tools are based on the
> same NeoCAD tools the Xilinx tools ar ebased on, so I am not surprised
> by some degree of commonality.  But are Altera and Actel on the same
> page?  Did they actually do something useful for engineers that might
> not be in their own best interests?
>
> I've seen that the PCB layout tools all have incompatible and mostly
> binary file formats and have staunchly resisted efforts to change.  It
> would seem they all write converters so you can change to their tool,
> but they don't like in any way to help you to leave their tool.  I
> would have expected this from the FPGA vendors as well.
>
> Rick
>