13 Nov
2011
13 Nov
'11
12:29 p.m.
That's great, and I'm with you in that I'd
much rather see open source to=
ols for this. However, the devices themselves and their configuration de=
tails are generally closely-held trade secrets, so closed vendor tools ar=
And this is what bothers me _a lot_. If the device is not fully
documented (as in, if I cann not predict its behavious when I load a
paritcular configuration file)m, then I can't know excatly what it is
doing to my design. So when my deisgn doesn't work, I am left trusting
that the manufacutrers tools and devices both work properly . Which is
certainyl somethign that I am not prepared to do. I want to know just
what is going wrong and why (nost likely -- 99.999% of the time -- it's
my desing that's wrong, but I want to be able to be sure of that).
e what we've got. If you're not willing to
run Windows or Linux to devel=
op FPGAs, you better be satisfied with only simulation.
Or do what I enjoy and use a soldering iron not a compiler...
It would be nice to see someone make more open
silicon, but without liter=
Actually IIRC there was one device that looked possible (Xilinx XC6000
series). It had very simple logic blocks and it was fully docuemtned. The
only problem was it weas discontinued before the UK distributors got any
of them...
-tony