I've had it up to the eyeballs with Xilinx tools now. I'm seriously ready
to go postal in the lobby of Xilinx HQ. I don't expect perfection but this
really is beyond a joke.

Can someone please put me out of my misery, and finally admit that you
have _all_ been having me on for the past few years now! :O ...that it has
all been an elaborate hoax instigated by someone I offended in a past
life. ...that a team of engineers has been working for years to produce an
IDE that crashes randomly, and steadfastly refuses to launch tools on
Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons? ...working for years on a
synthesizer that removes random bits of logic, or sits spinning in an
infinite loop on an entity that works in another project? ...that corrupts
my project file bi-monthly.

And worst of all - _you_ lot, telling me that Xilinx actually works, and
that you _can_ use it for more than flashing LEDs on the Spartan starter
kit. And I was gullible enough to believe you! :O :(

I've seen the light. You _cannot_ convince me that it is possible to
produce a commercial product in silicon using these tools. Period.

Regards,

--
Mark McDougall, Engineer
Virtual Logic Pty Ltd, <http://www.vl.com.au
21-25 King St, Rockdale, 2216
Ph: +612-9599-3255 Fax: +612-9599-3266

Mark McDougall wrote:
I've had it up to the eyeballs with Xilinx tools now. I'm seriously ready
to go postal in the lobby of Xilinx HQ. I don't expect perfection but this
really is beyond a joke.

snip

I've seen the light. You _cannot_ convince me that it is possible to
produce a commercial product in silicon using these tools. Period.

Regards,

If it is any solace, the Mentor schematic capture and PCB routing tools
are much worse. In addition to continuous license issues, crashes,
version compatibility problems, and file corruption, they produce
unreliable output. I now have to manually check every trace on a 10
layer PCB with multiple BGA packages ever since we discovered that the
tools can randomly delete nets from a fully routed board without warning.

At lease ISE only causes frustration and project delays. I've never had
to scrap thousands of USD worth of materials because of them.

I've had it up to the eyeballs with Xilinx tools now. I'm seriously ready
to go postal in the lobby of Xilinx HQ. I don't expect perfection but this
really is beyond a joke.

Can someone please put me out of my misery, and finally admit that you
have _all_ been having me on for the past few years now! :O ...that it has
all been an elaborate hoax instigated by someone I offended in a past
life. ...that a team of engineers has been working for years to produce an
IDE that crashes randomly, and steadfastly refuses to launch tools on
Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons? ...working for years on a
synthesizer that removes random bits of logic, or sits spinning in an
infinite loop on an entity that works in another project? ...that corrupts
my project file bi-monthly.

And worst of all - _you_ lot, telling me that Xilinx actually works, and
that you _can_ use it for more than flashing LEDs on the Spartan starter
kit. And I was gullible enough to believe you! :O :(

I've seen the light. You _cannot_ convince me that it is possible to
produce a commercial product in silicon using these tools. Period.

Regards,

--
Mark McDougall, Engineer
Virtual Logic Pty Ltd, <http://www.vl.com.au
21-25 King St, Rockdale, 2216
Ph: +612-9599-3255 Fax: +612-9599-3266

I've had it up to the eyeballs with Xilinx tools now. I'm seriously
ready to go postal in the lobby of Xilinx HQ. I don't expect
perfection but this really is beyond a joke.

Can someone please put me out of my misery, and finally admit that you
have _all_ been having me on for the past few years now! :O ...that
it has all been an elaborate hoax instigated by someone I offended in
a past life. ...that a team of engineers has been working for years
to produce an IDE that crashes randomly, and steadfastly refuses to
launch tools on Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons? ...working
for years on a synthesizer that removes random bits of logic, or sits
spinning in an infinite loop on an entity that works in another
project? ...that corrupts my project file bi-monthly.

And worst of all - _you_ lot, telling me that Xilinx actually works,
and that you _can_ use it for more than flashing LEDs on the Spartan
starter kit. And I was gullible enough to believe you! :O :(

I've seen the light. You _cannot_ convince me that it is possible to
produce a commercial product in silicon using these tools. Period.

I've had it up to the eyeballs with Xilinx tools now. I'm seriously ready
to go postal in the lobby of Xilinx HQ. I don't expect perfection but this
really is beyond a joke.

snip

I've seen the light. You _cannot_ convince me that it is possible to
produce a commercial product in silicon using these tools. Period.

Regards,

On Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:14:21 +1100
Mark McDougall <markm at (no spam) vl.com.au> wrote:

I've had it up to the eyeballs with Xilinx tools now. I'm seriously
ready to go postal in the lobby of Xilinx HQ. I don't expect
perfection but this really is beyond a joke.

Can someone please put me out of my misery, and finally admit that
you have _all_ been having me on for the past few years
now! :O ...that it has all been an elaborate hoax instigated by
someone I offended in a past life. ...that a team of engineers has
been working for years to produce an IDE that crashes randomly, and
steadfastly refuses to launch tools on Tuesday mornings and Friday
afternoons? ...working for years on a synthesizer that removes
random bits of logic, or sits spinning in an infinite loop on an
entity that works in another project? ...that corrupts my project
file bi-monthly.

And worst of all - _you_ lot, telling me that Xilinx actually works,
and that you _can_ use it for more than flashing LEDs on the Spartan
starter kit. And I was gullible enough to believe you! :O :(

I've seen the light. You _cannot_ convince me that it is possible to
produce a commercial product in silicon using these tools. Period.


I, at least, gave up on the ise wrapper about a year and a half ago -
it just didn't do it, anymore. Instead I drive the flow (xst, map,
par, etc) from a single makefile, and a short one at that - maybe 20
lines.

The things I know im missing out on is 1. the pretty XML reports and
2. COREgen etc hook-ins. The former I can survive without, as its
easier to grep through plain text reports anyway, and the latter I
typically only need to run once anyway, at which point I suffer ise
long enough to move the generated files somewhere sensible.

Just my experience.

//Oscar

The reason for using commercial tools is supposed to be the great
support and the lack of serious bugs... so if you don't like your
expensive layout tools, why use them? I used FreePCB on my last
project and found it very suitable. I am sure there are some things
that you need to do manually that expensive tools might do
automatically, but hand checking all the nets is not one of them.

Not trying to be smart, this is a serious question.

Rick

And worst of all - _you_ lot, telling me that Xilinx actually works, and
that you _can_ use it for more than flashing LEDs on the Spartan starter
kit. And I was gullible enough to believe you! :O :(

I've seen the light. You _cannot_ convince me that it is possible to
produce a commercial product in silicon using these tools. Period.
Umm, we have been developing stuff for some time for mostly in-house use

If it is any solace, the Mentor schematic capture and PCB routing tools
are much worse. In addition to continuous license issues, crashes,
version compatibility problems, and file corruption, they produce
unreliable output. I now have to manually check every trace on a 10
layer PCB with multiple BGA packages ever since we discovered that the
tools can randomly delete nets from a fully routed board without warning.

On Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:14:21 +1100



Mark McDougall <ma... at (no spam) vl.com.au> wrote:
I've had it up to the eyeballs with Xilinx tools now. I'm seriously
ready to go postal in the lobby of Xilinx HQ. I don't expect
perfection but this really is beyond a joke.

Can someone please put me out of my misery, and finally admit that you
have _all_ been having me on for the past few years now! :O ...that
it has all been an elaborate hoax instigated by someone I offended in
a past life. ...that a team of engineers has been working for years
to produce an IDE that crashes randomly, and steadfastly refuses to
launch tools on Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons? ...working
for years on a synthesizer that removes random bits of logic, or sits
spinning in an infinite loop on an entity that works in another
project? ...that corrupts my project file bi-monthly.

And worst of all - _you_ lot, telling me that Xilinx actually works,
and that you _can_ use it for more than flashing LEDs on the Spartan
starter kit. And I was gullible enough to believe you! :O :(

I've seen the light. You _cannot_ convince me that it is possible to
produce a commercial product in silicon using these tools. Period.

I, at least, gave up on the ise wrapper about a year and a half ago -
it just didn't do it, anymore. Instead I drive the flow (xst, map, par,
etc) from a single makefile, and a short one at that - maybe 20 lines.

The things I know im missing out on is 1. the pretty XML reports and 2.
COREgen etc hook-ins. The former I can survive without, as its
easier to grep through plain text reports anyway, and the latter I
typically only need to run once anyway, at which point I suffer ise
long enough to move the generated files somewhere sensible.

Just my experience.

//Oscar

I've had it up to the eyeballs with Xilinx tools now. I'm seriously ready
to go postal in the lobby of Xilinx HQ. I don't expect perfection but this
really is beyond a joke.

Can someone please put me out of my misery, and finally admit that you
have _all_ been having me on for the past few years now! :O ...that it has
all been an elaborate hoax instigated by someone I offended in a past
life. ...that a team of engineers has been working for years to produce an
IDE that crashes randomly, and steadfastly refuses to launch tools on
Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons? ...working for years on a
synthesizer that removes random bits of logic, or sits spinning in an
infinite loop on an entity that works in another project? ...that corrupts
my project file bi-monthly.

And worst of all - _you_ lot, telling me that Xilinx actually works, and
that you _can_ use it for more than flashing LEDs on the Spartan starter
kit. And I was gullible enough to believe you! :O :(

I've seen the light. You _cannot_ convince me that it is possible to
produce a commercial product in silicon using these tools. Period.

rickman wrote:
The reason for using commercial tools is supposed to be the great
support and the lack of serious bugs...  so if you don't like your
expensive layout tools, why use them?  I used FreePCB on my last
project and found it very suitable.  I am sure there are some things
that you need to do manually that expensive tools might do
automatically, but hand checking all the nets is not one of them.

Not trying to be smart, this is a serious question.

Rick

Good question. Mostly inertia.

If FreePCB will import our libraries and designs, I'll check it out in a
minute.

Maintenance is an issue. We are in the medical racket. Product lifetimes
can be a dozen years or more. We are still shipping product with
XC3142's in them. When parts go obsolete, we often need to quick turn a
board to keep shipping product. That means either we keep the tools
around for the duration, or find something that can read the files.

Most of my new designs are more or less 50% original and 50% cut and
pasted from previous designs. It saves a bit of time not having to
recreate parts and redraw schematics.

I've used Pads, Tango, Calay, Cadroid, Orcad, and a few other packages
over the years. Some were better than others, but all of them had
problems of one sort or another. I've kind of got to the point where if
my PC doesn't catch fire after I install a new version, I consider it a
victory.

Curt

 Do *any* layout tools import other layouts?