Thanks Ton, Please let us know the results of your evaluation.
Bob -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ton Kuijper Sent: Monday, November 22, 2004 8:19 AM To: Protel EDA Discussion List Subject: Re: [PEDA] Difficult to justify upgrading. Any decent alternatives? ----- Original Message ----- From: "bob stephens" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "'Protel EDA Discussion List'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, November 22, 2004 3:36 PM Subject: RE: [PEDA] Difficult to justify upgrading. Any decent alternatives? > This raises some interesting questions: > > Does anyone actually use Protel for FPGA design in favor of OEM tools? > > And more importantly: > > Did the inclusion of FPGA design tools and the Nano Board influence > anyone's > decision to buy 2004, or is this grand marketing strategy a total flop? > > Bob Stephens > > >>>I have never heard an engineer say they wanted FPGA tools from Altium. >>>NEVER! Every engineer I know uses the OEM tools for FPGA design. Hello Bob, I am doing an evaluation of DXP and have not yet decided to buy it. This forum and the Altium forum have given me lots of information that helps to get a "feeling" about DXP. The many negative reactions do not have so much influence, I want to see for myself anyway. Furthermore, I do not have the illusion that any package will ever exist that is 100% satisfactory. The main reason that I did spend some more time on DXP is its channels capability together with its room copy capabilities for these channels. The FPGA capability is only interesting to me because I do PCB and FPGA design and like the idea of one tool. I am not yet planning to do processors in FPGA, that perhaps comes in 2 or 3 years, so for now I don't need Nexar. I think when I would need processors now, there would not be any easy alternative for Nexar. I do Quicklogic FPGA's for some time now and have many reasons for a change of manufacturer. Far too much time is spent in problems with the tools than in designing. The FPGA chips of Quicklogic are excellent performers and use very little power, but they are not in-circuit programmable. That is a big drawback, especially in the initial stage of a design, but also if you like to upgrade a design later. Regarding tools from the FPGA supplier: Quicklogic changed its (third party) tools 3 times in less than a year, throwing away all gained experience. Schematic entry is totally ignored by the Quicklogic tools for some time and in fact not supported anymore they say. Bugs will stay forever.....and bugs there are! I am a real old fashioned hardware engineer, although I also did program uC's, in assembly of course :-). I don't want to use VHDL or Verilog if there is an alternative. The alternative for me is DXP. Defining stimuli for simulation of the FPGA also is a time consuming task in FPGA, via a waveform editor or via an ASCII file. Live Design via the Nanoboard seems to me the only right way to do it, especially the testing via the embedded virtual instruments and JTAG. You can connect real life signals and add the supplied virtual generators and analyzers, or design your own test equipment to embed. Download all in the Nanoboard or your own target and see it run gives me a better feeling than studying a simulation output. The large devices of the Nanoboard are ideal to add lots of things during test and when fully tested put it in a smaller device. But first I have to finish a "channels" design to see if DXP works for me, then I go to Actel for FPGA's. I already bought the Live Design Evaluation board with DXP, but that was because I failed to finish my evaluation within the 30-days period (other work needs to go on). Now I have another 30 days of evaluation :-) After the bad experience with so many changes in tools of Quicklogic, I really hope the Altium FPGA software will fill my needs. As I understand, Altium designs all the software themselves. The problem with most FPGA vendors is that they only make the chip related software (synthesis) and buy the other tools from (several) other suppliers. Regards Ton ____________________________________________________________ You are subscribed to the PEDA discussion forum To Post messages: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe and Other Options: http://techservinc.com/mailman/listinfo/peda_techservinc.com Browse or Search Old Archives (2001-2004): http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] Browse or Search Current Archives (2004-Current): http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] ____________________________________________________________ You are subscribed to the PEDA discussion forum To Post messages: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe and Other Options: http://techservinc.com/mailman/listinfo/peda_techservinc.com Browse or Search Old Archives (2001-2004): http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] Browse or Search Current Archives (2004-Current): http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
