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Old 05-07-2004, 04:21 PM
David Brown
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Default Re: Which board to buy? Status of open source tools?


"Jon Beniston" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected] om...
> > Also, what's the status of open source tools? (I like to tinker on
> > the software end of things, too, and I have a bad case of PowerBook
> > envy, and I haven't seen any software available other than x86 and
> > big-iron UNIX). Can they go from VHDL/Verilog all the way to
> > downloading the file to the chip? I see that compilation (Icarus
> > verilog) and downloading (found it in this group's FAQ) work, but what
> > about place and route? Icarus' docs say it's a no-go for this; is
> > there anything else, or must I use the Xilinx tools? (I guess I have
> > a Xilinx bias -- it's all I've used, and I don't see much else for
> > cheap development boards.)

>
> Why bother with Open Source stuff when various incarnations of
> commerical tools are free to use? Check out for the Xilinx WebPack:
>
> http://www.xilinx.com/xlnx/xil_prodc...le=ISE+WebPack
>


I think you misunderstand the point of Open Source - price is only one
aspect (and open source software is not necessarily free, although normally
you can find any given open source program somewhere for free downloading.
Frequently you can buy pre-packaged CD's, often with support, such as Linux
distributions or the OpenTech cdrom
http://www.opencores.org/projects.cg...opentech/about ).

The original poster was looking for open source tools because he likes to
tinker with the software, and because he wants to run the software on
something other than an x86 machine. That is possible with open source
software, but not with free closed source software.

Sites worth looking at are http://www.opencores.org ,
http://opencollector.org/ , and http://geda.seul.org . But as another
poster pointed out, there are good reasons why place and route software
tends to be proprietry.




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