Hi, Mentor's HDL Designer has many functions. But I really do not see any requirement to use a tool to generate a state machine (I have tested the tools from mentor and Xilinx ISE). Directly writing the code in a single always block is already very clear and easy. By using such tools usually cost more time. Many other functions in the HDL Designer are very useful. As a large company, Mentor's products indeed cover a very wide area, but at least in some cases, the free tools from Topweaver family are much more powerful.
1, Comparing TME with HDL Designer's Tabular IO, TME shows better performance in parameter/generic, dynamical adjustment of HDL code format, secure code synchronization, complex HDL code template and launch speed.
2, Like ISE, QUARTUS, ActiveHDL and other tools, HDL Designer's module integration function is based on traditional schematic method, which is hardly used in large projects. You can see these tools' demo all using only a few modules and wires. Topweaver can easily deal with hundreds of ports. A quick demo from
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can show how to fulfill the integration work within a few minutes. If you can use any other tool to get the same performance, please let me know. Now the new version of Topweaver is in the final test.
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