ISE5.2 to ISE6.1

Oct 17, 2003 11 Replies

Hi all,



I have updated my Xilinx software to 6.1 a few days ago and it looks like I am in for a ride; the design that worked well under the previous version (5.2 with all service packs) wouldn't even go through PAR anymore!! I managed to work around this by setting thr effort level to maximum for the place&route but when I program the FPGA (XC2V4000-5) with this new bitstream my board doesn't work anymore!!? Anybody having similar problems? I guess I shoild have known better: the service pack for this latest software creation arrived before the CD with the software did! In my humble oppinion the best software from Xilinx was 4.2, it's all downhill from there; it seems that a nice GUI is valued more than a decent and consistent PAR algorithm these days.


jakab

|> Anybody having similar problems?

Me too. A design for a 2S200 which needs to run at 130MHz (5.1 achieved ~133MHz without floorplaning) is slowed down with 6.1 to about 110MHz. "High effort" etc. does not help at all. Looking at the timinganalyzer output, it seems that MAP ignores the first carry chain block and uses regular logic and routing instead, thus stealing about 2ns :-(

Georg Acher, acher@in.tum.de http://wwwbode.in.tum.de/~acher "Oh no, not again !" The bowl of petunias

I've had similar problems. A few here have mentioned the problem you have. I have a problem with timing not being met (was met on 5.2i) even though I have several timing constraints and placement constraints that should help.

I'd agree with your final statement, but it really isn't a 'nice GUI'. It's more like a slopped-together GUI to get the task done, but pays little attention to the technical details that FPGA engineers desire or the good GUI design that can provide such nice results. As GUIs go, it's most comparable to the crap that Matlab added to their 6.0 stuff.

And don't even get me started on ECS. I've seen schematic capture programs done as an assembly-language programming course final project that are better than that.

Jake

I agree. 4.2 had bugs, but it was possible to work around them. Trying to compile the same project under 5.x and 6.x is a disaster. The bugs are so bad that it won't even synthesize.

: |> Anybody having similar problems?

: Me too. A design for a 2S200 which needs to run at 130MHz (5.1 achieved ~133MHz : without floorplaning) is slowed down with 6.1 to about 110MHz. "High effort" etc. : does not help at all. Looking at the timinganalyzer output, it seems that MAP : ignores the first carry chain block and uses regular logic and routing instead, : thus stealing about 2ns :-(

Perhaps send your code to Xilinx for inclusion in their regression test suite. However after the VLGINCDIR happening ( it was broken until 5.2 and is broken again in 6.1) I wonder if there is any...

Bye

Uwe Bonnes bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de Institut fuer Kernphysik Schlossgartenstrasse 9 64289 Darmstadt --------- Tel. 06151 162516 -------- Fax. 06151 164321 ----------

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401/884-7930 Fax 401/884-7950 email snipped-for-privacy@andraka.com
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"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin, 1759

Been there - done that, PAR just crashes now! "Will be fixed in next service pack" is as far as I can get with 6.1, so its back to 5.2 for me!

Cheers, Martin

martin.j.thompson@trw.com TRW Conekt, Solihull, UK http://www.trw.com/conekt

Hi, I am facing the same problem. I have a design in XC2S400E which is working well in ISE 5.1 sp3 and met all timing requirements. When I moved to 5.2 it failed to give required timing. I did not worry b'coz I knew that they are coming up with 6.1. Now when I synthesized/implemented my design in 6.1 (latest sp), it is giving the same result as in 5.2 (i.e. it is unable to meet the performance of

5.1). Now I am sticking with 5.1i since I have already used it for many months, and also given my product to some customers (I need to support them!!!). My gut feeling is that when they changed from 5.1 to 5.2 something has gone wrong in the tool software, and when they upgraded to 6.1 since they used 5.2 (i assume! ) as base version, the problem continued to exist even in 6.1. This is a clue to Xilinx people (anybody here?) so that they can findout the cause of this problem. Could anybody give assurance that atleast next versions will be free from critical problems like these?

Regards, Nagaraj CS

I see a new post started about this elsewhere in this group. My one comment is that the FAEs who post here recommend that you call the hotline and open a case on this. The sooner they learn of your problem the sooner they can address it and keep it from being *my* problem...

8^O

Nagaraj wrote:

Rick "rickman" Collins rick.collins@XYarius.com Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY removed. Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com 4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX
6.1 clearly has some problems. I recommend that you steer clear of it until these problems are cleared up. I intalled it on 3 computers and 2 had problems. What tech support wanted me to do made no sense (strip everything out of the path but xilinx). I am sorry, but I am not being paid to debug Xilinx's problems.

Tom Seim

Did you also install the service pack?

Rick "rickman" Collins rick.collins@XYarius.com Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY removed. Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com 4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX

I have had problems with 5.1,5.2 and 6.1 on XC2V4000 and XC2V6000 designs. My original designs were done on 4.x. I believe that the problem is in migrating the 4.2 designs to 6.1. I use 4.2 to synthesize and route, and Impact 5.2 to program the FPGAs. I have reported every problem to Xilinx. New designs that are originated using 6.1 work OK.

Bill Hanna

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