I have never used Xilinx's product before.In some articles are said the Xilinx's silicon is better than Altera.Is it realy?I'm only a university student and not have enough money to validate it.Can give some advice to me?
IMHO, that vastly depends on : - What families you're looking for ( more like high-end FPGA with embedded procesors, lots of LE/CE, ... ) - What you want to do with it ...
FWIW, I'm personnaly working at this time at a 'low-cost' design but that must do lots of multiplications, so the embedded multipliers of spartan 3 were a plus. Now, look at the JOP thread : If I wanted to implement it in a real app, the current results of altera synthesis would be a plus ...
Sylvain
There is the chip, the development system, the support, and the pricing. Since the support is the hardest part, choose the manufacturer which a colleague can introduce you to. You need at least a one hour introduction into everything.
Rene
-- Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar - http://www.ibrtses.com & commercial newsgroups - http://www.talkto.net
Both Altera and Xilinx have free tools available. Take some test design and do the synthesis, P&R and static timing analysis for both vendors. Make sure to select target devices so that the comparison is fair enough.
This does not cost you any $$, only some time and effort. And you also get to see the good and bad side of the design flow of both vendors. If you are not really pushing the limits of the latest FPGAs in your design, a smooth and intuitive tool flow is much more relevant than comparing "whose silicon is best". IMHO at least.
HTH
J.S.
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