How to program an XC5210

I have to say I'm pretty disgruntled with Xilinx right now. I've talked to two people there so far, including a lengthy private email exchange with Peter, and nobody seems to want to tell me how to do this. Peter was unable to suggest a single newer 5V part, and was unwilling to tell me what tools can be used to program the older 5V parts.

I'm beginning to look at other vendors; perhaps they support their customers a bit better than that.

Settle down guys .....

Adam: Peter is right, XC5210 is an old device, 'not for new designs'. Down side is this has also made it a 'tool orphan', but if you go back far enough, there are tool flows for it. If Xilinx were like Borland, they would put this into a museum, but there are also side issues, like who owns all the code, which OS it can run on, and who will be lumbered with support .....

Peter: Adam may need 5V and/or low Icc of the simpler XC5210. A downside of the singular evolutionary focus on speed / die shrink, is that the voltage tolerance, and static Icc (and even startup Icc) have all taken hits. The XC5210 may indeed 'belong in the old folks' home', but it also illustrates that 'newer' spins do not guarantee better numbers.

The CPLD sector _has_ woken to the importance of static Icc ( look at the spec-trading between Lattice and Xilinx on uA values in their newest cpld families )

Adam: Some newish devices do have 5V tolerant IOs ( see the other thread Re: SpartanXL )

Atmel still make low-end 5V FPGA devices, so they could be another candidate. Altera have some that have 5V tolerant IOs.

You can design with single supply 5V FPGAs, but will pay more for the venerable devices, than if you add another regulator with a newish, cheaper device. (but not too new, or you loose 5V tolerance :)

-jg

Peter Alfke wrote:

Here are some possible solutions:

- If 5V tollerance will work, use SpartanXL.

- If you need a true 5V device, use Spartan or XC4000E

- Software for Spartan, SpartanXL and XC4000E is available for free at:

- If you absolutely have to use the XC5200 family, you will need to get a copy of the XACT 6.0 software. You will probably need to contact our hotline to get this version.

Steve

Adam wrote:

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