Differences among the FPGA development tools.

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YES.

1 Libero is real pain 2 MAX+PLUS is obsoleted (replaced by Quartus) 3 ISE just works

Antti PS Quartus is OK too

Soon, the free ISE Webpack 7.1 will be released with linux support ! When will we have a Linux Quartus web edition ?

Sylvain

Don't know much about Libero or Quartus. ISE is good. I'm also impressed with Lattice's new ispLever. They have some unique fpgas and their tools cost less than the other guys.

What does it mean a "web" edition? Does it mean we can use it via HTML browser? What is the reason to bother about local OS then?

No, that's the version you can download freely from the web ... They called it "web edition" ...

Sylvain

each of these tools as you know is specific to their FPGA vendor. So I dont think you can really compare them.

Never used it.

The free version of ISE is good enough from small to medium size projects. It can synthesize up to 1.5 M gates with Spartan 3 chips. The paid version support larger chips and additional features such as FPGA editor and the CoreGenerator. You can buy the discounted student version of ISE, which is basically the same with the professional version, except that you aren't eligible for tech support and you can't use it to make money. You will need to download seperate ModelSim Xilinx Edition (also free), that simulates at full speed when your code is 500 lines or less. After that, the simulation will slow down but still works. If you don't like ModelSim, you can use other Simulators of your choice.

Really sucks! It has very clumsy user interface, and it doesn't support HDL based TestBench at all. Some Prof at my college forced us to use it. My experiences of using this jurassic tool has always been a nightmare. If you have a choice, stay away from it! Altera Quartus might be better, but I have a feeling that if it has built in simulator, it doesn't support HDL based testbench either!

Hendra