what is the minimum software required to take advantage of a virtex II pro (in terms of cost)?
just a poor college student trying to learn fpga's. Virtex II pro is obviously a bit excessive, but my main reason for learning fpga's is to begin to do high bandwidth data shuffling. the rocketio seems well suited to that, and i'm hoping with EDK i might actually be able to implement gigabit ethernet within my lifetime.
i found a dev kit with EDK for $500. EDK has ISE demo, but i'm not sure how much that will cover me for, ie: if its usable & relatively fully featured. it says the free web pack is not good for any but the simplest of virtex II pro's, presuambly in powerpc core support (which baseline vII pro lacks)
this is just for learning, i dont need a license to produce or distribute anything, although it would be nice (not required) if i could eventually like to release some of my work for free online.
kit is memec design one featuring xc2vp4:
thanks matt fowle