Re: gEDA-user: random project idea

[Larry Doolittle <ldoolitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jesse -

On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 08:28:29PM -0700, Jesse Gordon wrote:
> Igor2 wrote:
> > If we are at tools, I wonder... Is there an FPGA family that I could use
> > without using non-free software at all?
> >   
> I was going to ask that very question. The closest I've come to "free" 
> was xilinx's ISE Impact webpack which of course is only free to use and 
> only free for non-comercial projects. I was wondering if xilinx would 
> ever release the information to allow people to make a completely open 
> source truely free synthesis tool.

Of course, synthesis is the easy part, Icarus (almost, sort of)
does that already.  Place and Route is hard, especially because
so little experience exists in the open source community.
The real sticking point is bitstream generation, where Xilinx
and Altera are traditionally anal.

This question has a long history.  Perhaps the most notable
discussion is the 173-long thread titled "FPGA openness" in
2000 in comp.arch.fpga.  I don't think anything important has
changed since then regarding Xilinx or Altera.

On the free front, we have the excellent research of Adam Megacz
  http://research.cs.berkeley.edu/project/slipway/
Too bad the targeted device is so pathetic.

Also as a curiosity, see Reinoud's MPGA, an open source meta-FPGA.
That one seems to have dropped off the 'net.  Does anyone have an
archived copy?

    - Larry


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