HDL Designer from Mentor

It may be usefully for a schematic oriented designer or someone learning an hdl.

Once you learn an hdl, you may prefer your own text editor without all the graphical overhead.

-- Mike Treseler

Hi Robert,

I am a HDL user from 4 years. Now, I cannot do design without HDL. From CPLD design to big Virtex-II, HDL is the best I found.

Yes you can continue to write your complet VHDL in text in your favorite Text Editor, but do you know the hours for the documentation ? With HDL designer, the documentation is automatic when you designing, the documentation is ready to send to your customers (in html treeview or other format). Maybe, the winners of the next year will be in the reuse design methodology. HDL is, for me, the first KEY.

Regards, Laurent Gauch

I've been learning to use it for a month or so.. and I think the suggestion below is rather limited in its thought. HDL designer is an good tool for maintaining the libraries and (now) working with VHDL projects. It gives a graphical representation of VHDL code and allows the entry of state diagrams, flow diagrams as well as block diagrams (schematics). Add a third party editor like code-writer, and you get a good VHDL entry tool that is integrated into HDL.. then add modelsim and you've got a good simulator.. and Leonardo or precision and you've got VHDL (and verilog?) compile and simulate. We actually went the simplicity / VHDL way as its supposed to be a better tool.. but I think that's the guy who 'evaluated' the software's decision as his preference.

I've not noticed a lot of bugs in HDL designer but it does have a few.. it can be a bit of a pig to set up too.. This has to be the case as we have a company policy of not installing it to its default directory.. I think it doesn't like spaces in names.. such as "program files" .. but then again .. I can only go by how I was told to set it up. The editor isn't too bad but is not company policy so It only gets used when HDL hides files with bugs in them.. hear no evil .. see no evil I think. The text editor really doesn't like you editing a file outside it when the text editor is open thou.. killed HDL twice today doing that :-)

It also integrates with visual source safe but hopefully with others cause using VSS from within HDL designer runs like a dog with no legs. I've been told this is VSS's fault not HDL designer.. but everybody blames Microsoft

Modelsim is an expensive piece of crappy software full of bugs that I couldn't live without. It certainly speeds up the design process even if it crashes 3-4 times a day.

I'm sure someone who knows it better will correct me where I'm wrong.. or mislead .. but no flames please :-)

Simon

I have used FPGAdvantage for the past 2-3 years and despite some bugs that all SW systems have, I am very satisfied.

I use block diagrams for the hierarchy only and use HDL text files edited in emacs for all behavioural code. The biggest problems with HDL text files only designs are to understand how all components is connected together. So the graphical block diagram is a very good way to navigate in the design.

The code generated from block diagrams is ok, but a few colleagues have struggled with crappy code generated from state-machine diagrams and flow charts. Use them with care!

We have integrated HDL designer with ClearCase and that works well.

I have also struggled a bit with bugs in the interfacing between HDL designer and the synthesis tool. Now I start the synthesis tool stand-alone with my own scripts. ModelSim works fine though.

When you learn have to use FPGAdvantage and how you should not use it, you will be satisfied!

Hakon Lislebo

Designer

acquired

like it

in the

in

So

Hakon,

If just using the tool for top level block diagrams does it offer any advantages over a top level schematic in Quartus (Altera's tool)?

The automatically generated documentation in HTML as mentioned in another post sounds useful.

If you do generate code from state machine diagrams etc does it comment the resulting source code at all?

Nial Stewart

------------------------------------------------ Nial Stewart Developments Ltd FPGA and High Speed Digital Design

Nial, I am not familiar with the Quartus tool so I can not tell you. I use two or three levels of hierarchy in my designs and the schematichs is also very handy to disconnect and reconnect signals. Also if you suddenly want to route a debug signal up several levels to the top.

I dont remember the commenting of the generated state machine code.

HDL designer is a pretty good project manager as well. And you can write your own pearl plug-ins.

At the risk of starting a toolset discussion, I would recommend

Its mainly a very user friendly simulator (still not perfect, but a lot friendlier than Modelsim and on a par with its power and speed) but it also does much of the design entry and state machine generation/ testbench generation and project management as well.

It also integrates very well with a large number of synthesis tools so that you never need to leave ActiveHDL to synthesise and then simulate the finalised P&R product.

I believe you can get a reduced price Altera-only or Xilinx-only version.

My 2 pence worth :) Having used it for real for a year or so. No affiliation with the company etc. etc.

Paul Baxter

Designer

acquired

like it

in the

Can you explain a bit more please? I've heard many people say that Aldec is more "user-friendly", but personally (strictly personally!) I've always found its project system and its obsessive copying of files from place to place to be thoroughly confusing. It makes life very easy for you if you have just an HDL design and a single testbench file and no other tools interested in those source files, but as soon as I try to do anything more complicated I get hopelessly mired in its bizarre project system. (By the way, I always detested the Aldec project machine in the older Xilinx tools!).

Once again, for emphasis: this is my personal opinion only; we're happy to support any simulators for our training courses and other work; and my experience with Aldec is fairly limited, whereas I use ModelSim for the majority of my day-to-day HDL work. So I'd be delighted to hear from any Aldec champions out there.

It certainly lays down a few directories for certain activities (such as synthesis) but I have quite a flexible arrangement of src code in several sub-dirs and library directories with no problems. It doesn't copy these files into another directory with the tool chain I have (Altera/Leonardo). The exception is that constraint files of various types would need copying (automatically) into the synthesis directory (though it can generate default ones in place).

I also have had no problems with a hierarchy of testbench files/dirs for my specific combination of tools but of course each toolset combination will be different.

As to user-friendliness, its been a year or so since I last looked at modelsim, but I found its user interface to have a steeper learning curve than aldecs. Having said that, as you advance, both provide similar advanced windows and tools. I guess my main comment is that aldec's felt integrated as one application whereas I always felt modelsim was a collection of loosely coupled screens that didn't work so well together.

I was probably tainted by being fairly new to a grown-up simulator (Quartus doesn't really count) and appreciating the integrated approach of aldec.

Although my benchmarks are out of date (18 months ago) when I did evaluate both, both aldec and Mentor put up a similar speed for a typical mix of functional and timing simulations. That left user-interface and ease of use as my deciding factor.

Paul, Small world: 15 miles from Jonathon :)

default

my

be

advanced

use

Thanks for your comments. Obviously time for me to start using Aldec more regularly, so I get a chance to learn to love it ...

So, hi-tech is alive and well in southern England!

I agree with you on Aldec projects, but I don't get along with Modelsim's TCL Project Manager either.

My sim process is to cvs update all the project files to a local directory, run an emacs-vhdl-mode make, and fire off a vsim -do from a shell.

-- Mike Treseler.

--

--Ray Andraka, P.E. President, the Andraka Consulting Group, Inc.

"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin, 1759

Hi Jonathan -

I've evaluated Aldec and used ModelSim, HDL Designer, and Cadence NC-Sim quite a bit over the last 5 years. Several of the engineers that I've worked with over that time tend to agree with the opinion that I've developed about Aldec and ModelSim/HDL Designer, but that's still just my humble opinion along with a just a few other guys - everyone has their own take.

Our general conclusion was that Aldec is an excellent tool for small projects, engineers new to combined HDL/Schematic Capture/Simulation environments, and extremely cash-strapped organizations. As you move into larger projects with an engineering team of up to 5 or 6 engineers, HDL Designer really starts to provide some benefits over Aldec that start to justify the price tag. (Can you tell yet that I think the Mentor tools are over priced?)

Most folks that I have talked to that have used HDL designer focus on just a few features - block diagram editing and creation either by schematic capture or existing HDL import, integrated version management, push-button simulation or synthesis flow (simulation is much more 'push-button' than synthesis, for many reasons) and flexibility. By flexibility, I mean that you can use just about any text editor you like, and now they have added additional 'modes' of support for text file based code so you can now have a text file that the tool itself never modifies. And also, the PERL plug-in interface that runs downstream flows (simulation, synthesis, or whatever you want to create). Personally, I really like the PERL plug in environment because if there are bugs (and there have been) I can fix them myself and not have to wait for a new release. I can also modify a downstream interface to better suit the needs of my design environment.

HDL Designer does not have a very steep learning curve for the basic features. The advanced features, however, do require some time. It takes a while to figure out the details of the PERL downstream interface - it is relatively complex under the hood.

Also remember that the HTML documentation feature is only available in the full-up version and in HDL Detective, which allows full text to graphics import but no graphical editing. There used to be more options in the features that you got, but now they have 'simplified' it - meaning they all cost more. ;-) As the tool is offered now, the only truly beneficial combination of features for a design team are found in the full version, IMHO.

As always though, your mileage may vary. You might find that Aldec is just what you want and HDL Designer annoys you to no end. That's why I strongly advise anyone to EVALUATE - and try to stretch that evaluation as long as you can, because you may find a showstopper issue. The vendors may whine a bit, but usually will give you a fairly long string of evaluation licenses if you really need to continue your testing of the tools.

Best of luck!

Kleven

UK

snipped-for-privacy@doulos.com