CPLD/FPGA with Linux...

Main Page | Report this Page

Computers Forum Index » Computer Architecture - FPGA » CPLD/FPGA with Linux...

Page 1 of 1

CPLD/FPGA with Linux...

Author

Message

Scorpiion...

Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:01 pm

Guest

Hi, I have just started out with some VHDL in school and would like to have
something at home to play with. I'm not sure of CPLD vs FPGA for my use,
but CPLD feel more suited for smaller projects I guess. My question is how
Linux is supported as developmentplatform? (I have linux on my computers at
home and want to be able to us them as hostsystem, at school we use some
older version of a program called warp)

I have looked at some of Xilinks and Alteras homepages and it seams that
they have software for Linux. But it would be good to hear from someone
with experince how the different software packages work? (if some company
have better software than other, or someones software is better for the
Linux platform)

I'm just not sure where to start and some genereal tips on Linux and
CPLD/FPGAs would also be good to hear... :)

Regards, Robert

austin...

Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:01 pm

Guest

A very good source for students is:

http://www.digilentinc.com/

If you choose Xilinx Webpack for Linux (free download), and then you
can buy the small Spartan 3E board:

http://www.xilinx.com/tools/webpack.htm
(download webpack)

and

http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,719,721&Prod=BASYS2
(3E pcb)

which is commonly used at many universities and schools (so there is a
lot of stuff on the web sites of universities and schools).

Programming tools (the JTAG programming cable) used with Linux are
always a bit tough to get to work (just read the posts on the subject)
as support of USB isn't as trivial as it is with 'Windoze.'

Austin

Uwe Bonnes...

Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:01 pm

Guest

Scorpiion <Robert.nr1 at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:

Quote:

If you really want to learn, use CPLDs. They have few resources and few kind
of resources, and so to implement something you soon hit their size limit
with deficiencies of your coding and solution approach and to squeeze your
project in the CPLD, you need to learn a lot. If you want to implement
bigger things, FPGA soon gets easier and cheaper. You can even learn a much
more with them, have they have zillions of different resources to learn and
understand.

Other things to consider:
- Number of supply voltages needed(One for XC95 versus 2 for XC2C/XC3SA
versus 3 for other XC3S)
- Voltage tolerance needed (only XC95XV is (limited ) 5-Volt tolerant
- Is the toolchain available for linux. At what costs.
To my knowledge, Altera doesn't offer a free Linx version.
- Size of your project: If you need more than about 140 registers, XC3SA
with SPI Flash soon gets to similar costs to a decent sized CPLD.
- Where do go get help. If you decide for e,g. FPGA but for friends use
CPLD, help is harder to get.

Bye
--
Uwe Bonnes bon at (no spam) elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik Schlossgartenstrasse 9 64289 Darmstadt
--------- Tel. 06151 162516 -------- Fax. 06151 164321 ----------

DJ Delorie...

Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 8:28 pm

Guest

I use the Xilinx ISE WebPack under Linux for CPLD and FPGA work,
although I have my own hardware solutions for programming the physical
devices.

Andy Botterill...

Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 9:28 pm

Guest

Scorpiion wrote:

Quote:

webpack ISE 10.1 works under Fedora 8 and 11 (still checking that out).
For the free version you get the 32 bit version. It will work on a 64
bit system. I do that already. To use 64 bit version of webpack you need
to pay for licenses etc.

You may have to pay for the full version to use the larger/newer fpga's.

The ISIM simulator does work under linux.

I have no knowledge of VHDL simulators for linux.

The officially supported o/s is RHEL and I think vista.

Support for the design process I don't know. Andy

Quote:

I have looked at some of Xilinks and Alteras homepages and it seams that
they have software for Linux. But it would be good to hear from someone
with experince how the different software packages work? (if some company
have better software than other, or someones software is better for the
Linux platform)

I'm just not sure where to start and some genereal tips on Linux and
CPLD/FPGAs would also be good to hear... :)

Regards, Robert

Uwe Bonnes...

Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2009 8:46 am

Guest

austin <austin at (no spam) xilinx.com> wrote:

Quote:

Programming tools (the JTAG programming cable) used with Linux are
always a bit tough to get to work (just read the posts on the subject)
as support of USB isn't as trivial as it is with 'Windoze.'

Xc3sprog at sourceforge is also supposed to work out of the box for many
cable and devices. I am interessted in cases where it doesn't.

--
Uwe Bonnes bon at (no spam) elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik Schlossgartenstrasse 9 64289 Darmstadt
--------- Tel. 06151 162516 -------- Fax. 06151 164321 ----------

HT-Lab...

Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2009 12:15 pm

Guest

"Andy Botterill" <andy at (no spam) plymouth2.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:4ae0966d$0$17520$bed64819 at (no spam) gradwell.net...

Quote:

Scorpiion wrote:
...

The ISIM simulator does work under linux.

I have no knowledge of VHDL simulators for linux.

It is called Modelsim DE (just released)

The good news is that it includes PSL/SVA so assertions are no longer reserved
for the big boys :-)

Hans
www.ht-lab.com

Quote:

The officially supported o/s is RHEL and I think vista.

Support for the design process I don't know. Andy

I have looked at some of Xilinks and Alteras homepages and it seams that
they have software for Linux. But it would be good to hear from someone
with experince how the different software packages work? (if some company
have better software than other, or someones software is better for the
Linux platform)

I'm just not sure where to start and some genereal tips on Linux and
CPLD/FPGAs would also be good to hear... :)

Regards, Robert

Habib Bouaziz-Viallet...

Posted: Fri Oct 23, 2009 12:27 pm

Guest

Le Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:42:15 -0700, austin a écrit :

Quote:

Programming tools (the JTAG programming cable) used with Linux are
always a bit tough to get to work (just read the posts on the subject)
as support of USB isn't as trivial as it is with 'Windoze.'
Are you sure of that ? Xilinx windrv ported to linux is a nightmare. I'm

using this library <http://www.rmdir.de/~michael/xilinx/> fairly support
cable III, cableIV and this one http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/
Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,395,716&Prod=XUP-USB-JTAG i'm using for the moment.

You can read the XAPP502 if you want to deeply embed programming CPLD/
FPGA. As an example PROGRAM, CCLK, DIN, INIT, DONE signals are quite
easily driven by a microcontroller to do the job with a .bit or .rbt file.

After a discussion with M. Delorie in this very ng, i found XAPP058 a bit
complicated for my needs ...

Habib

Nico Coesel...

Posted: Sat Oct 24, 2009 2:16 am

Guest

Uwe Bonnes <bon at (no spam) elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de> wrote:

Quote:

- Voltage tolerance needed (only XC95XV is (limited ) 5-Volt tolerant

Xilinx's Spartan 2 (not 2E!) is also 5V tolerant. Same goes for older
Virtex devices.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
"If it doesn't fit, use a bigger hammer!"
--------------------------------------------------------------

Anssi Saari...

Posted: Sat Oct 24, 2009 7:53 pm

Guest

"Scorpiion" <Robert.nr1 at (no spam) gmail.com> writes:

Quote:

I've used Xilinx ISE and EDK in Linux a lot, Modelsim too (the
expensive Modelsim SE usually). They work just fine, since version 9.1
as I recall. Previous versions were a little bad in the GUI
department, since that was done with some kind of converter tool.

I haven't really used a Xilinx cable driver in Linux since 2006.
Worked fine then, but the labs I've been in since then have had
Windows machines.

Quote:

(if some company have better software than other, or someones
software is better for the Linux platform)

You may want to look at the free offerings from Lattice and Actel too,
as far as I know they provide free Modelsim and Synplify. Not sure if
they provide it for a student though.

I don't know what the story is with Altera. I vaguely remember
finding, downloading and running their free Web Edition for Linux last
spring, but I can't find it now.

Bob Smith...

Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2009 11:25 pm

Guest

Scorpiion wrote:

Quote:

You might want to consider a BaseBoard4 from Demand Peripherals.
I designed the board _specifically_ to be used with Linux. This
means that it does not use JTAG for download and so does not need
the windrv stuff. The board uses a USB-to-serial FTDI part and
so downloading code to the board is as simple as
cat myfpgacode.bin > /dev/ttyUSB0

There is a tutorial on how to install the Xilinx tools on Linux,
how to build a simple counter (i.e. "Hello, World!" for an FPGA),
and how to download and test the code on a BaseBoard4. The build
environment uses vi and make. Check it out:
http://www.demandperipherals.com/docs/CmdLineFPGA.pdf

The board costs $100 and has a Spartan 3E 100K on it. This is
neither particularly cheap or over-powered but it sure is nice
to use Linux, vi, and make for FPGA development.

Bob Smith

Scorpiion...

Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 12:50 am

Guest

Okey, many answers, thanks! Smile

I will need to look this up a little bit
more. But all these "developmentboards", is it like a programmer in those
so I can program other chips than the one on the board? Or is it not like
with MCU where you have a separated programmer? At school we have that but
when I look at most homepages there are always these development boards...

So, is development board used much more that just a bare chip and a
programmer? Maybe because the chip's are so complex that they always need a
custom PCB? How much does a CPLD/FPGA programmer cost? Can a
microcontroller "program" an CPLD/FPGA? It should be able to do that I
think but I have never does, I wonder how usual it is? And a last question,
I have read that some chip has a special memory that get loaded into the
chip a boot, is that more common then that the CPLD/FPGA stores it's
instructions?

(I think that CPLD usually or always store the instructions in them self?)

Regards

---------------------------------------
This message was sent using the comp.arch.fpga web interface on
http://www.FPGARelated.com

Page 1 of 1

All times are GMT The time now is Mon Nov 30, 2009 6:06 am Computers Forum Index