New Laptop for work

I prefer xp-pro because it allows you to use it over remote desktop. As to whether that feature is needed on a laptop is your choice.

For the 2D realm it'll make no noticeable difference. If 3D's your bag (basically games) then integrated video is pretty hopeless. On the brightside integrated video will increase battery life which is always a bonus.

Probably not. I suspect it means you can connect the laptop to a VGA monitor, or TV with S-Video input. Note that while S-Video is OK for watching a film, it's hopeless for actual work (unless you like headaches).

Unless you can bump it up to a 4Mb cache version, I doubt the extra $100's for a few MHz is going to make all that much difference. 2GB memory is about the most that XP can reasonably handle anyway, unless you fancy playing with 64bit linux which is always an option (hint - repartition the drives and reinstall windows the second you get the laptop if you are even considering this option).

Dunno - the biggest difference I've found with a dual core machine is that I can continue working thanks to the second processor. Now I'm not waiting for it to finish all the time, I care a good bit less about how long it takes.

Cheers,

Andy

Consider a small form factor PC, they are small enough to carry home and you get all the power of a desktop. The only disadvantage is that you can't use them at an airport :-)

Correct, if you need a parallel port just look on ebay for a low-cost PCMCIA parallel port card (don't buy a USB to Parallel port cable since they do not work with dongles and apparently download cables). Serial ports are no problem, I bought a £7 USB to serial port cable and it works perfectly ( I use it with Teraterm to connect to my prototype board).

Definitely, most EDA companies do not yet support Vista and if you don't care about wobbly windows then stick with XP. As suggested by Andy I would also recommend you set-up a dual boot with Linux. If you do this then I would recommend using Redhat or one of its clones like CentOS 4.4 (not 5). Linux is a great EDA environment although for some reason some EDA companies still like to charge extra for their Linux version. I would also suggest you keep your XP installation since you might nullify your warranty (completely brain-dead I know).

If you want more screen area go for a single 24" (1920*1200) display since they are absolutely great. I used to have two 19" screens and I get tell you that a single 24" screen works much much better. Also most EDA tools require large high-res screens, look at the number of windows in Modelsim or HDL designer, you simply can not use them on anything less than 1280*1024 unless you are one of those persons that can watch and enjoy a video on your mobile (cell phone) :-)

Go for 4Gbyte, this will make your P&R run a lot faster. Yes you can only use 3.2GByte under XP but even the extra 1.2Gbyte will make a difference.

According to an English PC magazine both Rock and PCnextday (zoostorm) came out as one of the fastest laptops in their price class:

With the current speed of development I would say a year is just about long enough before it is time to pass on your laptop to your kids or family member :-)

Hans

About the display: 15.4" in not enough for a real work. You should better buy a 17", your eyes would be pleased. As they say: integrated graphic card is OK if you do not use 3D programs.

Guru

That is a neat idea. The slim Vostro "desktops" look pretty small and can be had with something considerably more powerful for considerably less expense. Either way, you might check out one of the MANY deal sites (like

- but there are lots of others) that keep track of the latest "best deals" from Dell. Just browse the left column. If you don't like what you see, wait a week, they usually morph slightly.

I'm not sure I agree completely with this part. If your design is large enough to use that memory, it will help. And honestly, it may be less about the size of the design and more about the size/number of contraints in the .ucf (at least according to the warning ISE gives on a few of our designs).

Marc

You are absolutely right, it is the number of constraints that seems to eat memory like there is no tomorrow. I had a design which had a reasonable number of false-path which couldn't be routed on 4Gbyte+4Gbyte swap machine, however, when I removed the constraints it only consumed 1Gbyte.

The point I should have made is that memory prices are at an all time low so don't skimp on it especially since most laptops are now dual core so you might need some reserves for your VMware session :-)

Hans

Thanks to all for their insights.

Isn't memory at all time low prices most of the time? That alone does not make any given amount cheap. Especially with Dell! They will give you 1 or 2 GB with the machine and then charge you another $300 or more to bump it up to 4 GB!

If you think memory is cheap now, just give it until after Christmas! It has been predicted for some time that both RAM and Flash prices would be creeping up with the extra demand for the holidays. But instead it has continued to creep down. With the softening of demand following the holidays, memory prices should come down another 10 to

20% by February.

Besides, this will be *a* work machine, but if I have large designs to deal with, I will come up with a desktop that can easily (and cheaply) be maxed out on memory.

BTW, if I am running Win2K, does it have the same 3.2 GB limitation or is it less? I assume the 3.2 GB limit is from the 32 bit address size? Why is it 3.2 instead of 4 GB?

The small form factor machine is not really the best way to go since not only can you not use it in an airport, you can't use it anywhere you don't have a monitor and keyboard. At this time I feel I really need a laptop.

rickman schrieb:

The devices on the PCI bus, for example, are memory mapped and eat up quite a lot of address space. There are ways to use the RAM between 3 and 4 GB, but you're on the safer side if you put 3 GB in your machine if you can live with that. Otherwise think about using an 64-bit OS.

Xilinx has a web page that gives some details about the memory requirements of ISE depending on the target device.

Regards Andreas

I'm waiting until January when the Penryns come out. The Penryns have 6M caches and amazingly low power. NCVerilog seems to be very sensitive to cache size, my benchmarking shows dramatic performance increases with each jump in cache size. I don't know if we've reached the point of diminishing returns after 4M but it seems like it would be worth the wait for the 6M Penryns to find out.

Yes, I am a big fan of large displays. But I don't want to get Vista. The only machines I have found that come with XP are Dell Vostro (or the much more expensive business models) and they don't provide XP with the 17 inch models for some reason. I even mentioned to the guy on the phone that they would be losing a sale because of this and he said he would pass that on.

Actually, I am very impressed with the Vostro 1500 models in terms of price and functionality. Even the 1700 model (17 inch display) is a pretty good buy at around $850, but my understanding is that Vista uses so much memory that 2 GB is not a lot. Buying ram from them is absurdly high so I don't want to have to go above the 2 GB that come with the machine... what ever happened to the days of 640 kB being a lot of RAM??? How fast do you think XST would run if it was rewritten to work with mag tape?

Yes, I hope I can wait. But I expect the Penryns to be priced out of my range. I also don't have any confidence that they will be out at any given time. Intel may be shipping in January, but that doesn't mean they will appear in any laptops other than very high end for a while longer.