13 Nov
2011
13 Nov
'11
11:52 a.m.
On Sun, 13 Nov 2011, Tony Duell wrote:
Peter Wallace
Mesa Electronics
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Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2011 18:13:44 +0000 (GMT)
From: Tony Duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk
Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org To: cctalk at
classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: VHDL PDP11
As far as I know there is no complete open FPGA (or even CPLD). By
'completely open' I mean that there is sufficient docuemtation available
(without an NDA) to go from a design (be that as a schematic, a wirelist,
VHDL, whatever) to the necessary data to program into the chip, and be
able to actually program that data into the chip.
While this is true of current FPGAs, I dont think this is completely true,
the Xilinx XC6200 and perhaps some other manufacturers chips have this
information available. Also there are some brave souls poking about at open
source tools as well, for example:
www.milkymist.org/fpgatools
> I wonder if there is open source / reasonably
priced tools to take
> the source -> workable code.
Open source, no. But both Xilinx and Altera
offer the compiler tools
(runnable on Windows and Linux) needed to run on all their low-cost
devices (and some of their high-end ones) for free;
...except that you have to (a) be willing to run either Windows or
Linux, (b) run on their choice of hardware, and either (c1) set up a
very heavily firewalled sacrificial system or (c2) trust the security
of your system to code they aren't even willing to let you look at.