Best Xilinx toolchains for under $2,000 ?

[AndyAtHome]

Dear All,

I'm just about to purchase Xilinx ISE BaseX plus MXE for 1,295 USD.
Having downloaded the free edition I have to say I'm less than
impressed with the general user friendliness - no keyboard shortcuts,
no code completion, etc.

Is it the case that in terms of commercial tools chains ISE plus
Modelsim is the only thing in the market under $2,000?

It would be great to hear from any other Xilinx developer's that have
found an alternative under 2,000 USD.

Thanks,

Andy.

 

[john jakson]

fpgadev@yahoo.com (AndyAtHome) wrote in message news:<29ab33c4.0404220812.3fe7b63@posting.google.com>...

Dear All,

I'm just about to purchase Xilinx ISE BaseX plus MXE for 1,295 USD.
Having downloaded the free edition I have to say I'm less than
impressed with the general user friendliness - no keyboard shortcuts,
no code completion, etc.

I haven't had any gripes with Webpack XST other than very optimistic
XST synth results for sp3. KB shortcuts wouldn't save me much, you can
use other text editors instead of that provided like TextPad with
language support. I am not sure code completion means much, if the
tool could guess what you want, I thinks it would be mostly wrong. HDL
keyword completion might help a little but code entry is pretty
minimal part of design isn't it. Theres also the templates ready made
to edit.

Is it the case that in terms of commercial tools chains ISE plus
Modelsim is the only thing in the market under $2,000?

At a DAC show I picked up a full license for 1 of the other Verilog
simulators for $1K, it was the 1st time they ever sold a license on
the floor to an EE. Normally EDA budgets are out of EE hands so they
usually only sell outside the show to accounts.

It would be great to hear from any other Xilinx developer's that have
found an alternative under 2,000 USD.

There is also the free HDL simulators but I haven't tried them.

Thanks,

Andy.

regards

johnjakson_usa_com

 

[Nial Stewart]

"AndyAtHome" <fpgadev@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:29ab33c4.0404220812.3fe7b63@posting.google.com...

Dear All,

I'm just about to purchase Xilinx ISE BaseX plus MXE for 1,295 USD.
Having downloaded the free edition I have to say I'm less than
impressed with the general user friendliness - no keyboard shortcuts,
no code completion, etc.

As Jon says, don't rely on the P+R tools for design entry, there
are much better text editors about (I too use Textpad).

Is it the case that in terms of commercial tools chains ISE plus
Modelsim is the only thing in the market under $2,000?

The 'full' version of Modelsim is >$5K I think.

Have a look at ..

www.symphonyeda.com

...for a less expensive alternative.



Nial Stewart

------------------------------------------------
Nial Stewart Developments Ltd
FPGA and High Speed Digital Design
www.nialstewartdevelopments.co.uk

 

[B. Joshua Rosen]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004 15:33:07 +0100, Nial Stewart wrote:

"AndyAtHome" <fpgadev@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:29ab33c4.0404220812.3fe7b63@posting.google.com...
Dear All,

I'm just about to purchase Xilinx ISE BaseX plus MXE for 1,295 USD.
Having downloaded the free edition I have to say I'm less than
impressed with the general user friendliness - no keyboard shortcuts,
no code completion, etc.

As Jon says, don't rely on the P+R tools for design entry, there
are much better text editors about (I too use Textpad).

Both Emacs and Xemacs are available on every platform. There is an
excellent Verilog mode as well as VHDL mode that will do everything that
you ever dreamed you needed. Don't waste your time using primitive editors.

 

[Tommy Thorn]

Emacs + Icarus Verilog + Quartus II does the trick for me quite nicely
and all is for free.

The _only_ thing I miss from the paid-for Quartus is the FPGA Editor and
more device support. I spend 95% of the time in Emacs and Icarus
Verilog, so I don't care much about the remaining 5% as long as it works
(and Quartus II is very stable). When I used Xilinx WebPACK I even had
scripted the P&R and programming tools so I would never leave Emacs. I
have yet to take the time to figure out how to do that with Quartus.

I'm curious, what are you really expecting better for your $2k? A
better editor?

Tommy


AndyAtHome wrote:

Dear All,

I'm just about to purchase Xilinx ISE BaseX plus MXE for 1,295 USD.
Having downloaded the free edition I have to say I'm less than
impressed with the general user friendliness - no keyboard shortcuts,
no code completion, etc.

Is it the case that in terms of commercial tools chains ISE plus
Modelsim is the only thing in the market under $2,000?

It would be great to hear from any other Xilinx developer's that have
found an alternative under 2,000 USD.

Thanks,

Andy.

 

[Bob Perlman]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004 13:26:57 -0400, "B. Joshua Rosen"
<bjrosen@polybus.com> wrote:

Both Emacs and Xemacs are available on every platform. There is an
excellent Verilog mode as well as VHDL mode that will do everything that
you ever dreamed you needed. Don't waste your time using primitive editors.

And there's another option: some of the features of Verilog mode for
emacs--automatic argument lists, automatic module instantiation--can
be run in batch mode. I invoke emacs in batch mode from inside
UltraEdit (world's best text editor, IMHO) and never have to look at
an emacs screen or struggle with the funky emacs command sequences.
Very nice.

Bob Perlman
Cambrian Design Works

 

[AndyAtHome]

Tommy Thorn <TommyAtNumba-Tu.Com--not@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<WCcic.7764$Fo4.96400@typhoon.sonic.net>...

Emacs + Icarus Verilog + Quartus II does the trick for me quite nicely
and all is for free.

The _only_ thing I miss from the paid-for Quartus is the FPGA Editor and
more device support. I spend 95% of the time in Emacs and Icarus
Verilog, so I don't care much about the remaining 5% as long as it works
(and Quartus II is very stable). When I used Xilinx WebPACK I even had
scripted the P&R and programming tools so I would never leave Emacs. I
have yet to take the time to figure out how to do that with Quartus.

I'm curious, what are you really expecting better for your $2k? A
better editor?

Tommy

Thanks for all your replies.

Tommy - I should have mentioned that I'm from a Java background, so
moving from my favourite IDE, IntelliJ's IDEA, to Xilinx's editor I
instantly missed features like code completion.

However, as was pointed out, HDL design entry will perhaps only
consume a small percentage of total development time, and so editor
features are perhaps less important than in a high level language IDE.

As there seems to be abundant alternatives to the in built editor, I'm
not going to worry about it too much.

Nial - Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check out Symphony EDA.
You're right about the Modelsim price, I spoke to a distributor who
mentioned circa 3,000 UKP for PE edition, however I was hoping to get
away with the XE edition for the moment and use <1M gate devices.

Thanks,

Andy.