Has anyone used any of the HW debug tools that are available for use with a logic analyzer? I'm talking about the FPGAView tool from First Silicon Solutions for the Tek analyzer, or the Dynamic probe from Agilent.
I'm starting a new project, and have no analyzer. Some groups in the company are using Altera, some are using Xilinx. I'm reasonably neutral.
Do you have any horror stories or successes? Any thoughts?
RB
One thing worth considering is using logic analyser cores from Xilinx - Chipscope or Altera - Signaltap themselves alone. If you are on a tightish budget they are very cost effective and very good. We find we don't usually need anything more and they are very portable, i.e. laptop, if you need to work in the field. Downside of thsee tools is they need resource in the FPGA. Using one of the hookups to an external analyser does mean less resource used in the FPGA and that is generally the only time I would use such an analyser. Even then I would take the option, if available, of starting with an oversized FPGA to allow the build in of an analyser function rather than plan to use an external analyser.
John Adair Enterpo> Has anyone used any of the HW debug tools that are available for use
Still, an external analyser has a much deeper storage than available inside an fpga. And a logic analyzer doesn't need to be expensive. For instance, my ancient DAS9200 with 92C96XD card has up to 512k points per channel (at 400Ms/s). I bought it on Ebay a few years ago for 66 US Dollar. Every now and then a TLA500 or TLA510 (the little brothers of the DAS9200) unit pops up.
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