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Which workstation or server should I take to build a state-of-the-art FPGA CAE tool workstation?

I was wondering which PC configuration is the best for: Running ISE Running Modelsim Running Synplify Premier

Just to simulate and synthesize / place and route complex Xilinx FPGA's like the V4 FX100's.

Would it be Intel or AMD? Would it be 32bits or 64 bit? MultiCore? HyperThreating? Would 4GB be enough? Dual Channel Memory I guess? Linux or Windows? Which filesystem? Other things that make sense?

It would be nice just having a list of FPGA CAE Tools benchmark results of some nice servers/workstations. It is available?

Roel

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Roel
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Athlon64 with 1M caches. I haven't updated these for a while but these benchmarks are still relevant,

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What's not on there are dual cores, however I can tell you that the Athlon

64 X2 4400+ runs about 10% faster then the 3400+ on single threaded applications which is to be expected because each core is basically a 3400+, i.e. 2.2GHz with a 1M cache, but it has a much faster main memory system (dual channel vs single channel). The X2's handle multiprocessing very well, I typically run simultaneous simulations and place and routes.

As you can see from my benchmarks a 1M cache on the A64 is extremely important. There is a 2 to 1 difference in performance on NCVerilog between a 1M A64 and a 1/2M A64.

I'm currently using an X2 4400+ with 4G of RAM and 64 bit Fedora Core 4. I'm running the latest Xilinx and Altera tools as well as NCSim. I highly recommend this setup for FPGA development.

Reply to
Josh Rosen

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