FPGA Central

Hi

Sorry, for putting this question here but I have heard that the Xilinx
support is quite busy so perhaps someone can help me out here a little
bit quicker . I am just wondering if there is an easy option to
upgrade an older version, in our case ISE version 7.1 to the new
release? It would first of all be interesting to know how much it would
cost and how long it would take to get a copy, or is it perhaps possible
to have access to the software distributions via FTP?

Thanks a lot!

On Nov 19, 10:13 am, Harald <Har...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi
>
> Sorry, for putting this question here but I have heard that the Xilinx
> support is quite busy so perhaps someone can help me out here a little
> bit quicker . I am just wondering if there is an easy option to
> upgrade an older version, in our case ISE version 7.1 to the new
> release? It would first of all be interesting to know how much it would
> cost and how long it would take to get a copy, or is it perhaps possible
> to have access to the software distributions via FTP?
>
> Thanks a lot!

You can download a free version, the ISE WebPack, from the Xilinx
website. The full version costs around US$2500, I believe. The free
version is pretty good, though, but it doesn't support some of the
newer and denser chips.

> You can download a free version, the ISE WebPack, from the Xilinx
> website. The full version costs around US$2500, I believe. The free
> version is pretty good, though, but it doesn't support some of the
> newer and denser chips.

Wow thats for free? Cool, well i have a quite old Virtex|| board to I
assume that should be fine. Can this tool compete with the Synopsis and
Cadence Design Compilers?

Cheers!

On Nov 19, 7:55 am, Harald <Har...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > You can download a free version, the ISE WebPack, from the Xilinx
> > website. The full version costs around US$2500, I believe. The free
> > version is pretty good, though, but it doesn't support some of the
> > newer and denser chips.
>
> Wow thats for free? Cool, well i have a quite old Virtex|| board to I
> assume that should be fine. Can this tool compete with the Synopsis and
> Cadence Design Compilers?
>
> Cheers!

Yes, WebPack is free. Well, not -exactly- free, you need to give
Xilinx a valid email address, and let them try and sell you chips.

A couple of years ago, I benchmarked XST (Xilinx Synthesis Tool)
against FPGA Express (the Synopsys tool they used to sell with ISE)
and found that the differences were very small. At the time I found
the Synopsys tool was better at inferring chip constructs (like ROM)
than XST, but once I core-gen'd a couple of parts, XST made an
equivalent chip.

G.

> A couple of years ago, I benchmarked XST (Xilinx Synthesis Tool)
> against FPGA Express (the Synopsys tool they used to sell with ISE)
> and found that the differences were very small. At the time I found
> the Synopsys tool was better at inferring chip constructs (like ROM)
> than XST, but once I core-gen'd a couple of parts, XST made an
> equivalent chip.

Sounds good, I just have here a full version of 7.1 available.
So everyone would recommend me to download the 9.2 webpackage version
and install that instead of 7.1?

Cheers!

Harald schrieb:
> Sounds good, I just have here a full version of 7.1 available.
> So everyone would recommend me to download the 9.2 webpackage version
> and install that instead of 7.1?

That depends if your device is supported by WebPack. Take a look at
http://www.xilinx.com/ise/products/webpack_config.htm

Regards,
Andreas