Revisit: Altera vs Xilinx (NIOS II vs Microblaze)

I expect Mr Tease forgot about thousands of FPGA student boards and ISE educational licenses that became worthless without VHDL/Verilog support in ISE. I know more than a few students that took that hit.

And I should also note, thousands of Spartan student boards and products. Just so Xilinx could force their obsolence and jump start it's new product sales following the 2002 down turn off the backs of students and universities. There was probably a few $M in product in the educational market that Xilinx killed, and didn't need to other than to save a few hundred thousand by omitting XC4K/Spartan support from XST.

So tell me, why don't those few count?

I think what Austin ment to say was no fortune 100 customer has these problems. (Nobody else counts)

I feel your pain, but the fpga manufacturers would have caused more pain by going out business.

When the synthesis vendors realized that they weren't getting many leads from their oem tools, they pulled the plug.

Both brands A and X handled the transition to in-house synthesis poorly, but both have acceptable tools today.

I believe that digital design students would be better off not having a board at all until they are fully competent with hdl language, simulation and synthesis.

To learn those basics, all I need is an editor, simulator and RTL viewer.

-- Mike Treseler

I'm confused...

I distinctly remember many emails from Xilinx about the end of FPGA Express support, and several options for for the future.

A perception I had (from those emails) was that it was a rather nasty divorce. I'm willing to believe that Xilinx did all they could to support their customers; I got a good deal of help from their support staff preparing for the future.

I chose to sand-bag a copy of ISE-4.2 just in case I ever had to fix any of my Spartan-I or 4K designs. Last time I checked, it worked just fine; the FPGA-Express license hadn't expired, nor had ISE stopped working.

In a way, they did me a favor by dropping support for those devices. I'm real happy to never do a Spartan-I design ever, ever again.

G.

I can only partly agree with that.

Yes, the students are novices, and what they get the boads to do will be very simple, but the Boards/Hardware give an important psychology connection to the real world.

A digital design student graduating never having seen a device, or data sheet, is not a good idea.

I'd rate the microcontroller sector, ahead of the FPGA on in this aspect - there are some truly impressive 'USB Stick' eval boards at low prices out there.

-jg

I hear what you're saying. A scope trace is slightly more real than a sim waveform. But from the novice postings here, I have to conclude that the psychology connection is sometimes a magic recipe rather than an understanding of what's really going on to make that LED flash.

I agree. A capstone or thesis project should involve serious work with real hardware. However, the instructor should provide hardware demonstrations during lectures as well

-- as in physics 101.

-- Mike Treseler

There was absolutely no risk for Xilinx going out of business if it has spent another man year or two software engineering labor to include XC4K/Spartan support into XST. A few hundred thousand dollar cost to provide the expected support for probably $100M of product they forced early obsolecence of by that ommission.,

What they did do was hurt a lot of small businesses like mine and my clients at the time, and thousands of students.

That created a burst of new product sales, as people scrambled to reengineer with Spartan 2's and Virtex parts. One of my former clients was so angry about almost being put out of business by it, they will never buy Xilinx again.

And today we have Austin crowing about others circling the drain, and how they commit to customer support, and always have.

Bull Pucky .... outright ....

At any point since, they could have included XC4K/Spartan synthesis in XST while highly profitable, as Austin continuously touts, the highest margins in the industry. But no ... they screwed a lot of people, and didn't even look back to make a buck.

Hi,

The question is not whether Xilinx can add 4k device family support in XST. The question is at what cost. Everything costs resources and would mean giving up on something else. Would everyone be happy if XST did not support the latest architecture for Inference and also did not have good language coverage at the cost of supporting synthesis for the now 4 yr old 4K device family? I would think not. If Xilinx has infinite supply of resources this can be done. The reality is that there are no inifinite resources, so there has to be some compromises that have to be made.

Also note that Xilinx does provide software support other than synthesis in XST. You can download the ISE Classics from the website for all the implementation tools. In general nothing was removed something was just not added. If this is a major issue anyone can work with Mentor or Synplcity for their synthesis tools to synthesize the designs. Pricing can be an issue, although I am sure they can give eval versions if they were asked.

Thanks Duth

Hi Duth,

You missed the point, actually several.

First we are talking about what Xilinx should have done 4 years ago, when they got into the licensing problem with FPGA Express.

Second, both XC4K and Spartan devices were still relatively current devices at that time, as they were still being stuffed on boards, but generally not recommended for new designs.

Third, there were a huge number of them in current use, especially in the educational market.

Last, the cost to Xilinx to include XC4K/Spartan support in XST would have been relatively minor, maybe a man year or two. And as you note, the hard part was already done, working, and shipping ... the place and route, plus bit stream utilities which are the most device dependent. While I've not seen the XST code, I would not have been suprised if the difference between Spartan 2 support and providing XC4K/Spartan support XST was actually less than a man year.

There are still a large number of these student boards floating around, without any affordable VHDL/Verilog synthesis support.

So, the point is, this is a clear example of Austin's hype about Xilinx's high moral support position being perfect, and other competitors poor, is simply wrong -- and in my mind -- an outright lie.

Xilinx CPLD support goes back further than this, so that seems to exclude any fundamental road-blocks. They can still compile ABEL Code & target new CPLDs with that, so that's quite good longevity.

I don't use Spartan, but what 'missing pieces' prevent someone doing a design in the present flows ?

As you say, the P&R & bistream are all done, so that leaves a HDL to netlist compile ? - this could make a good student project ?

Or, maybe even an open-source project ;)

-jg

lt.

I think totally_lost is unfair with Xilinx regarding the end of FPGA Express. I remember this story because i used XC4000e board with my students and FPGA Express. What are the facts :

in september 2001, Synopsys decided to stop OEM license for FPGA Express then to stop FPGA Express. Synopsys is to blame, not Xilinx.

I used ISE 4.3 with Express for years after this time and it still works today. No end of support, perpetual license for Express, no problem at all. In 2006, i decided to design new board with Spartan-3 and switch to ISE 7.1.

XC4000 was not supported by XST, that's true but it was still supported by Express and worked perfectly. What is the problem ???

ISE 4.3 still works, Express still works so what ? Where is the crime ? You can still design old FPGA and old board with old software.

when i discovered this story, i blamed Synopsys, not xilinx.

have your HD crash, and ask Xilinx for another key for your license so you can reinstall on the new drive ... you cann't get one.

Well, so we now have reduced the flaming merciless attacks on Xilinx to something much simpler: the problem of obtaining new software, after you failed to back up your computer properly. What a "tempest in a tea pot", as the British say. Maybe something can be done about this... Peter Alfke, from home

Nope. Try reading the guy's post more carefully. He needed a new key to go with the new harddrive. Backups won't usually duplicate the volume serial number.

My $0.02 as a EE student. I hate to work on obsolete hardware. What's a point on studying design on Spartan-I and 4K if You won't find them in real life? I was lucky to start my FPGA adventure with Spartan3 and some older Flex from Altera. I recon that both vendors give decent free tools at least for hardware part. I have yet to try soft cpu cores.

@Totally_Lost: I feel Your pain. Being on the verge of loosing your business must be a big deal, but wasn't it partially Your fault? I have notice that vendors tend to warn that some part I going obsolete a long time before it actually happens. You wasn't warned?

@Xilinx: Refusing providing a license key to client who has already bought something from You smells fishy. I don't know all the facts so I am not telling it is Your fault, but something doesn't seem to be right.

Peter ... you guys screwed up failing to put XC4K/Spartan support in XST, don't blame me, or the thousands of students with XC4K/Spartan student boards for not getting a license early and sandbagging a copy of the early ISE releases. After all that would be circumvention of your copy protection, would it not?

Still doesn't help those students and hobbiests that purchased an XC4K/ Spartan student board after the fact, not knowing there was no longer Xilinx VHDL/Verilog synthesis, does it? In 2003 that WAS a serious problem, still is to some degree today as I see them going thru eBay at the same prices as supported boards on a regular basis.

John

Also Peter, seems the terms of the ISE license (including the FPGA express) is one year for new designs, and after that limited to support of existing designs? So using it after 2003 for new XC4K/ Spartan designs would be in violation of the license?

As of Jan 2004 the Digikey catalog is still selling new XC4K parts, which Xilinx has no Synthesis support for. Tell me those customers got the same value for their dollar that the 2002 and 2003 Digikey customers got. It probably took Digikey a long time to move that inventory Xilinx obsoleted early by withdrawing synthesis support,