Xilinx impact, boldly going into nightmareland

Mar 16, 2008 1 Replies
A

ISE 9.2SP4 blues again.. HDL synthesis passes only after anti-virus disable, ok learned that ISE is now in VIRUS category.



but how to program with Impact? until SP4 it was somewhat understandable, you select the device, right click with the mouse, select program, and it programs.



but since SP4 that is no longer possible! right click only allows to assign new file!



ok, i learned that too, you must go "processes window" then double click, then wait the dialog, and click.



but why is the "program" removed from right click menu???



every single SP brings new surprises. Is that all? to surprise the customers with new features? things to know? workarounds to get things to use to work to work again?



Antti is not only who would like to see Xilinx to improve the SW quality. And maybe maybe it would be time for Xilinx to arrange some beta-testers who would do their job?


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A

Hi Antti, Last week I gave a training on programmable logic and Xilinx's tools with ISE9.2i. It was a bit frustrating the time I lost helping students to solve this kind of upsets in the tools. I was so happy with 7.1.04 where everything seems stable. Now I have to use the 9.2 because the training and found several issues. Before naming them the solution for the right-button menu is simple: click with mouse at any place in the white background of the chain window. This will redraw the screen and then you can select a device in the chain and have the right-button menu working. The other glitches I found was problems downloading a design with USB cable (iMPACT must run outside ISE) and automatic file update/ assignment when the Assign Package Pins is kept open (inside ISE). Some times it works inside the tools. Seems to be directly realted to the lucky of the user. I had 12 students, 6 computers. Some did run inside ISE, others must run outside ISE in order to have the design downloaded. You can imagine the difficulty to explain to students (all engineers with discrete digital design experience and using X tools for the first time) those glitches does not mean the tools are bad... If I had enough time I would change the class manuals to "Using command line to solve GUI interface problems".

The iMPACT also has a strange behavior whe using USB. If it does detect the USB cable has an old firmware version it gives no choice but update it. So, this update may take several hours (depending the computer) and, as far as I can imagine as a designer, the old version should be able to handle USB-JTAG interfacing or it would never be released. The update would help new features (or solve bugs in special cases) but the user should have the option not do it. Plain FLASH or FPGA configuration should take place no matter the USB cable version... Hope ISE10 will be better but as far as I was told it will demand more system memory and this alone mean more surprises... Best regards, Augusto

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