Dear Casper Collaborators,
Our Berkeley CASPER group has switched operating systems
to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 for the CASPER tool flow.
We strongly recommend that you make make this change
if you are using Linux for version 10.x or 11.x of the Xilinx tools.
(Version 10.x or 11.x are required for Roach or Virtex 5/6).
Specific Recommendation
--------------------------
For anyone using or planning to install the 11.x SG/ISE/EDK toolflow
under linux,
we recommend you install on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5)
distribution
or other Xilinx supported operating system.
There are several reasons we recommend this change:
1. RHEL5 is one of a small number of operating systems supported by
Xilinx.
Others are listed at http://www.xilinx.com/ise/ossupport/index.htm
2. If you want support from Xilinx, (eg: ask questions, etc)
Xilinx will insist you use one of these operation systems.
3. We've only been able to get the 11.4 toolflow to work on RHEL5.
11.3 has been mostly working under Debian/Ubuntu, but is no longer
available on the Xilinx website.
When generating with SG 11.4 under Debian/Ubuntu, there is a
MasterScriptxx.pl error that is unresolved.
4. We've encountered several subtle bugs that at first don't appear
related to choice of operating system,
but these bugs vanish when we run the tools under RHEL5.
For instance, Terry ran into a problem trying to ROM with 13
address bits using distributed memory;
this errors out under Debian/Ubuntu but compiles fine under RHEL5.
(this ROM is used in the FFT unscrambler for Npoints >=8K)
5. There could be unforeseeable consequences (more subtle bugs) using an
unsupported OS.
Best Wishes,
The Berkeley CASPER group
(Dan, Mark, Terry, Billy, Andrew, Suraj, Aaron, Marin, Matt, Mel and Don)
