ise9.1 : partitions with edif flow

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I'm not sure how the edif-based partition flow works. My understanding is that you still need to run the whole design (including the synthesis stage) in ISE. By using edif, you minimize the work done by xst but I think that xst needs to run in ISE for partitions to work later down the flow.

You might also want to give the -smartguide flag a try at the map and par stages instead.

Patrick

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In edif flow, xst is not used as synthesis tool. A third party synthesis tool, like Synplify Pro, generates an edif, which is passed to the xilinx ngdbuild, map and par tools. For the xilinx tools to know which partitions are defined and which partions have been changed, the third party synthesis tool has to write writes this information into the edif file. So both the third party synthesis tool and xilinx tools agree on where this information is found in the edif. That is what my question is about, where can I find documentation on what exactly is written in the edif file, for what concerns partitions.

In addition, I have read somewhere that Synplify Pro also generates a tcl file with some info regarding partitions, but again with no details.

Yes, I understand that Synplify generates the edif. My point is that in order for the ngdbuild, map and par tools to know about partitions, the design must be implemented using the ISE environnement (no need to use xst after all, my mistake). The only place where you can specify what part of the design is a partition, is within the ISE flow. Basically you can't just feed your edif to ngdbuild, it won't recognize the partitions.

"When ISE parses the EDIF file, it will create the relative Partition for each tagged hierarchical node." Only ISE can create partitions which will be understood by ngdbuild.

I just found this article, it seems to explain everything we need to know about partitions+Synplify.

If you want to stay all command-line, you need to use the new tcl interface to run the Xilinx tools (you can't run them directly to use partitions). See chapter 3 of the Development System Reference Guide.

Good luck.

Ok, this is new for me.

This was also my source. It's a bit strange although that xilinx does not include this information into their documentation.

I will give the tcl interface a try then,

Thanks