FPGA development

Hi Jo,

You can download and use the free web-pack kits for Xilinx and Altera (and maybe Actel and Lattice have free kits). In these kits you can map your VHDL/Verilog code to the selected FPGA device. The disadvantages of the kits are that they do not support all (especially larger) devices and I am not sure if you can program your device (but in that case you need also a development board). But they are a very good starting point.

The VHDL/Verilog code can be entered in a text-editor. The kits have maybe a graphical editor but I have no experience with them. I am also not aware of a free graphical editor.

Succes,

Devas

Hi Devas

THank you for the pointer.

Best regards

JO

Just an additional note. Many home computers run Windows 7 or other "home" editions, and may have limited support from the FPGA software. I'd suggest looking at the OS support matrix at the FPGA manufacturer web-sites to see if your system is sufficient. Windows XP Pro and RedHat Linux are supported for most if not all of these tools.

-- Gabor

What do you mean by graphical editor?

I second that. Nowadays I do FPGA development on a Linux machine.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
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The Xilinx web-kit includes download software, but you need hardware, of course. There are some basic hardware development kits available for reasonable prices ($150 range, IIRC). You won't end up with the biggest or fastest parts, but it'll be an FPGA.

--
www.wescottdesign.com

Note that the WebPack does not support 64-bit OS's. I think this is due to US export regulations. (At least this was true last time I checked.)

Jon

I'll stick to 32 bit for the following years. Unlike Windows Linux has an excellent solution to use more than 4GB without needing a 64bit OS.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------

Not officially...

But if your 64-bit OS has the correct 32-bit compatibility libraries installed, Webpack will run just fine. You just have to modify the install script, where it detects the 64-bit OS and exits, to comment out the exit... Then it will install and just work without further problems.

Tested with Webpack 10.1 to 13.1 inclusive, on OpenSuse 11.0 to 11.4. (I adopted OpenSuse because 11.0 offered to install the 32-bit libs and simply worked, and I haven't looked back). Will probably work with most other recent Linuxes (you may have to find/install a few libraries).

- Brian

I doubt that, at least Altera includes 64-bit binaries with their free stuff.

I installed the Xilinx Web Pack Version 13.2 onto my Windows 7 Professional system with no issues what so ever. It's been running very well even through the recent Windows 7 Service Pack 1 installation.

--

Michael Karas
Carousel Design Solutions
http://www.carousel-design.com

I have acquired a number of these Spartan-3E boards for some FPGA prototyping work:

The price is right and these are nice because you can simply add on the

96 pin connectors (32 x 3) in order to connect them up to your other development prototype hardware. I use the DIN 41612 type right angle connectors on the board and then use the corresponding mate on the prototype board.

Also from eBay you can get these boards if you can live with a smaller FPGA and a potentially lower lower price:

1396

--

Michael Karas
Carousel Design Solutions
http://www.carousel-design.com

minor correction; ISE13.1 Webpack installs and runs "out of the box" on a

64-bit system. On OpenSuse 11.3 at least; I haven't tried any others.

- Brian

It's hard to even buy a PC with less than 4 GB of memory which means it has to have a 64 bit version of a Windows OS. If FPGA vendors don't want to support 64 bit OS how can they expect customers to work with their larger devices? I guess they just don't expect them to be using the free versions of their tools. So they have to maintain two completely different tool sets? I know the way the simulation vendors sell tools with different levels of performance is to sell everyone the same code and to turn on the "cripple" factor on the low end tools. I would think the FPGA vendors would be providing the same software to everyone and just using a license to enable the higher end features of the paid for software. I guess they could turn off 64 bit support too... but that would be too strange.

Rick

Windows comes with a virtualized XP on board. You can expose it with the Microsoft VM "client" or something like VMLite.

-- Les Cargill

Not necessarily. See:

In Linux, up to 64GB is supported this way. In most Windows versions, support is however limited to 4GB (with a few exceptions for "Datacenter" editions).

(snip, someone wrote)

I have ISE13.2, I believe the 64 bit webpack.

Well, the hardware supports 36 bit real addressing even in 32 bit mode, though a single task can't address more than about 3GB.

The free versions don't support the larger devices. The line keeps moving, though, and even small devices P&R faster with more memory.

As far as I know, it is usually a compile time option to generate the 32bit or 64bit instructions.

-- glen

I'm running 64-bit Webpack v 13.1 on Windows 7.

Rob.