Hi,
I are looking to purchase some FPGA software in the very near term for a project utilizing Xilinix's Virtex-4 device.
I are relatively new to FPGA design and would appreciate any comments from those who have experience with Virtex-4 regarding FPGA synthesis software options.
I have looked at Mentor, Synplicity, Synopsis, and Xilinx solutions. Are there any recommendations for or Against any of the above? Am I missing a good resonably priceds third party option?
Thanks, Chris
Some of it depends what size/type device you are using, and how much money you would like to spend. The DO-ML403-EDK-ISE seems to be a good deal if the target is a FX12 part
If FPGA's and ASIC's are not in your immediate future, I would pass on Synopsys.
Xilinx Synthesizer works pretty well, and is bundled with the implementation tools. The above package comes with a baseX version that limits the size of the device. The full version costs more.
Synplicity is regarded very well, and has the advantage of being able to target different vendors as with Synnopsys and Mentor.
Don't really have any data on Mentor.
BTW. I own Synplicity stock.
-Newman
Waage wrote:
Some of it depends what size/type device you are using, and how much money you would like to spend. The DO-ML403-EDK-ISE seems to be a good deal if the target is a FX12 part
If FPGA's and ASIC's are not in your immediate future, I would pass on Synopsys.
Xilinx Synthesizer works pretty well, and is bundled with the implementation tools. The above package comes with a baseX version that limits the size of the device. The full version costs more.
Synplicity is regarded very well, and has the advantage of being able to target different vendors as with Synnopsys and Mentor.
Don't really have any data on Mentor.
BTW. I own Synplicity stock.
-Newman
Waage wrote:
I've had good experience with Synplicity. Smaller and faster results, easier to use, good technical support.
Xilinx does ok. Price is right. Good choice as long as speed and density are not critical, or if speed and density are so critical as to force the designer to map all logic by hand.
-- Phil Hays to reply solve: phil_hays at not(coldmail) dot com If not cold then hot
If you can afford the price of Synplicity, I would definitively recommend you Synplify Pro for the quality of its results.
The only drawback that I think of is stability. It performs very well but it might (not so rarely) happen that it crashes w/o any result. Fortunately, the support is very reactive to provide us w/ new releases fixing the issues.
Has someone a significant experience w/ Amplify (or the new SynplifyPremierDP) from Synplicity? What do you think about it?
Eric
The one main complaint I have with symplify is the number of warnings and messages it generates... I like to check them off and say "that's ok" ... "that's unnecessary" etc .. but I haven't found a way to turn the unnecessary ones off.
Typically this happens on some of my standard modules which might have unused pins or internal blocks which are going to be optimized out, but will leave a signal or two (which will also be optimized away).
Altera fixed this with the 'if_used' attribute in AHDL... but that's gone by the wayside since AHDL isn't supported any more. The other annoying one is where ROMS are generated and it optimizes columns out as they aren't unique ... something's you just don't care about :-)
Simon
I've had one recent experience where XST did better (timing-wise) than Synplicity. Unfortunately, I don't really know why as it was not my code.
Cheers, Martin
-- martin.j.thompson@trw.com TRW Conekt, Solihull, UK http://www.trw.com/conekt
One more problem with ISE XST. In Synthesis Constraint file (.xcf) you can not use wildcards.
Thanks all for your feedback. There's a huge difference in pricing between Xilinx and the third party tools. It's great to get some opinions to help narrow down the choice a bit.
Chris
Synplify Pro now has a "message window" that sorts all the notes, warnings and such in groupings. There is a filter included to ignore those messages we all "know" aren't of any help. It's better than trying to look through the log but it's still not the best interface. Cartainly an improvement, however.
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