Re: gEDA-user: fpga

[Darrell Harmon <mail@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Oct 28, 2005 at 01:17:43PM +0200, antonio bergnoli wrote:
> there are  very good tools pertaining this task.
> i use dayly this great software:
> 
> - Emacs + vhdl mode + speedbar ( as editor and code browser); [GPL]
> - ghdl as  vhdl simulator; (Great!!) [GPL]
> - gtkwave as wave viewer; [GPL]
> - xilinx ise webpack as synthesys , place an route an porgramming tools 
> [free]
> 
> you have to spend a week reading documentation but at the end you'll 
> have a complete FPGA devel system running over linux
> 
> PS: recently i got sucess in post synthesys simulation using ghdl!
> 
> 
> 
> Kov?cs Levente ha scritto:
> >Hey all,
> >
> >Can someone point me some article about FPGA programming on Linux. I
> >mean... from design to uploading the code to the FPGA. What tools are
> >available... etc. I'm pretty new to FPGA... I spent half a day
> >googleing without any succes.
> >
> >Thanx. Levente
> >
> 
> 
> -- 
> Antonio Bergnoli
> 
> INFN Sez Padova
> Via Marzolo n.8
> 35131 Padova ITALY
> 
> Tel  +39 049 827 7093
> Cell +39 328 232 8803
> 

I use verilog, so Icarus and emacs verilog mode work well for me. I use 
gtkwave as well. I also use Xilinx ISE Webpack. Xilinx only supports it
on RHEL, but it works alright on debian. You will need Motif from
non-free. It was somewhat difficult to get working , and is a slow pig.
It uses a gig of disk and they reccommend a few gigs of RAM. I was unable
to get the altera M$ Windows software to work under debian/wine. I would 
prefer to use altera, but if there software is unusable it is not an 
option. 

Maybe someday Xilinx or Altera will release the documentation on the 
bitstream and we can use free/open software to take a design from 
an idea to implentation. Thanks to all who have worked on Icarus and 
GTKwave for making simulation possible using Free software.

Darrell Harmon
http://dlharmon.com