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XDL Tools wiki site

I've set up a wiki space for discussion of ideas for an open source XDL tool suite. For those not familiar with wikis, they are collaborative web spaces that can be edited by anyone (for now it is editable by anyone; if there are problems we can restrict edit access to approved authors) or by a select set of individuals. They're used quite commonly for software projects now as they are great for discussion of features, todo lists, idea boards, etc.

If you had tools that could parse and programatically generate XDL how would you use them? Some suggestions have been made in other recent threads here on comp.arch.fpga, now let's collect those ideas in the wikispace that I've setup here:

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There is a Feature Request page you'll see on the home page. You can go to that page and edit it or you can add comments to any page by clicking on the 'Discuss' link at the right hand side of the page.

No code has yet been written. The idea here is to try to collect some ideas to see what people would want to use XDL for and then, since time is limited, determine what would give us the most 'bang for the buck' (ie. what might be the most useful features that can be achieved with a reasonable amount of programming effort).

Oh, and I've also setup a page there for discussion of LegalIssues for those who are legally inclined ;-)

Phil

Reply to
Phil Tomson
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Thanks Phil...

ummm...

is there any way to access it?

it keeps asking me to login (which I don't mind, except that I don't have an account, and there's no "register" button :-)

well that's one "feature request" but you'll forgive me for not posting it in the right place :-)

- Brian (who is almost sorry for "pushing" XDL having seen what the discussion degenerated into)

Reply to
Brian Drummond

Hi Brian,

agree 'degenerated' is a mild word for whats happened - XDL has been around for pretty long time and if those interested in the use of XDL have not done so far, well that is not the fault of Xilinx (and its license policy).

hum, as of the Phil's setup thing, it looked weird that someone is password login authorization protecting websites about some Open-Source discussion. At first I did not want to register at all, then did come back determined to register, but failed to register completly as there seems to be no way to access the pages at all :(

Antti Lukats

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Reply to
Antti Lukats

It appears to be a bug at stikipad (it's a fairly new service). I keep tryinng to edit the configuration so that the wiki is viewable by anyone, but it keeps reverting back to 'viewable by authors only' mode. I sent an email to support. In the meantime, you could become an author by getting an account at stikipad:

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Then you'd be able to log in. (BTW: it's a pretty cool service, if you sign up you get one free wiki)

No problem. Definitely looking forward to your input.

Phil

Reply to
Phil Tomson

Antti,

As I mentioned in the post in reply to Brian, the wiki is hosted by

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- they let you host one wiki for free. I think there is a bug in their system that does not allow me to make the wiki viewable to everyone. If you go to
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you can sign up for an account and then you can view the wiki. Hopefully this problem will be addressed soon so that you won't have to sign up.

Phil

Reply to
Phil Tomson

Antti, It seems you already have a wiki with an entry for XDL tools, can we use it if we can't get the stikipad wiki to be publicly viewable?

Phil

Reply to
Phil Tomson

OK, I just got the word from stikipad: it turns out that they weren't very clear in the setup that you can only have a publicly available wiki if you pay $4.95/month. Otherwise you can have other people sign up as authors at stickipad.com. So, now I'm not sure if the stikipad wiki is going to be all that useful... $4.95 isn't all that much, but I'd rather look into some alternatives where I could host all my web projects (not just a wiki) for about the same price.

Phil

Reply to
Phil Tomson

"Phil Tomson" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@enews3.newsguy.com...

yes, of course.

--
Antti Lukats
http://www.xilant.com
Reply to
Antti Lukats

Well Austin just clearified XDL's use:

"XDL and related info being a public use interface to ISE outside of NDA restrictions" is clearly prohibited.

Which basically includes any public discussion of XDL and open source access to XDL.

Reply to
fpga_toys

Phil,

If you desire an opinion, please contact our legal group.

John's email to you is incomplete. Go read my posting, and make your own decision. Or better yet, contact our legal department,

Austin

Reply to
Austin Lesea

What did I miss Austin? .... the EULA NDA terms and your statement clearly mean personal use only, disclosure in public discussions can not assume the other members are under the same NDA terms, and you have been clear that no open source access exists.

That leaves limited EDIF and XNF access to open source tools which produce net lists for Xilinx ISE.

Reply to
fpga_toys

Yeah, that's the plan at this point.

As is with most everything related to law, the more that is said, the muddier things get ;-)

Phil

Reply to
Phil Tomson

John,

If you create a XDL from using Xilinx tools, then the license says that the XDL must be used to program a Xilinx device, and that you are prevented from doing any reverse engineering, disclosure of IP, etc.

Nothing would prevent you from writing a parser that prepared a nice usage report for display, however.

Or, if you use an XDL that you create, and then put it back into a Xilinx tool, the same license restrictions apply.

I am not sure, but I don't see any other uses of XDL covered by the agreement. It is, after all, just an ASCII format of connections.

Why anyone would use it, and not use our tools, I wouldn't know.

They could just as well use YADL (yet another design language - I have no copyrights, or trademarks, so I make this acronym freely available to all).

One case I see now is that you create a tool to convert something (like c) into XDL. Then someone else uses our tools to create bitstreams.

Sounds good to me! But: only

If you (and they) didn't reveal anything about our tools, IP, etc.

And you and they never used our software to develop your tool. Or to test our tool (both of which would be a violation of the agreement). Or to reverse engineer our software or hardware.

Then we get bitstreams (which are covered by the use agreement from the person who used the generated XDL from your tool to push through our tool) which sells more of our silicon.

Again, I am no lawyer, so at this point, I am just blathering on with my own opinions.

Austin

Reply to
Austin Lesea

True ... if the format were public outside ISE, and the related EULA NDA. So, in practice today, not possible ...

See above, without a public description of XDL, then you have to use ISE tools to obtain it ... info that is again EULA NDA locked.

Just a proprietary ASCII format of connections until publicly disclosed.

Once the format/syntax is publicly available. Then to use it you need to know the names of the Xilinx objects that you can instantiate, and what the arguments are for those objects (pin names and functions).

Which again, is only documented inside ISE subject to EULA NDA terms.

Reply to
fpga_toys

Since you start out by contradicting yourself, it's really hard to figure out what you mean.

Reply to
cs_posting

Without the equiv public data found in the XNF specification ... file format and object definitions ... it's not possible.

Reply to
fpga_toys

cs,

I see. Seems we never even disclosed the basics of the XDL format. I had thought that we had disclosed its construction, and structure.

Well then. Looks like XDL is off limits, too.

Now that we have that understood, perhaps we can retire this entire thread and move onto something else?

Austin

Reply to
Austin Lesea

Sure ... I think we have more than hashed this to death :(

It's probably better at this point to lobby it as a business decision with sales/marketing and real customers.

Reply to
fpga_toys

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