Re: Actel vs. Xilinx and Altera

Hi Joel,

As suggested before I would simply write some time/area critical blocks of
your design, then synthesize/P&R for the three different families and see
what you get. obviously you need to study all 3 architectures since you
might need to do some low level stuff. If you don't have an all vendors
synthesis tool then get an evaluation copy of Precision/Synplicity which
should sort you out for at least 30 days :-) You might also want to speak to
an FAE from all three companies (ask the Actel guy when the ProASIC3+ARM
core will be available :-) to see what support is like. For debugging I
would suggest you have a look at Temento's Dialite which is an FPGA
independent JTAG debugger on steroids :-)

Regards,
Hans.
www.ht-lab.com

"Joel Kolstad" <JKolstad71HatesSpam@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:11cp5ptpk3jg1c2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Hi,
>
> It's been a couple of years since I've been a heavy FPGA user, but it
> appears
> that I'll now be getting back into them. As of a few years back, I was
> using
> Xilinx Virtex IIe parts and was quite happy with them... I kept up with
> what
> Altera was doing as well, and while it always seemed to me that for DSP
> applications Xilinx tended to have the edge, in many ways Xilnx and Altera
> were the Coke and Pepsi of FPGAs -- both were good, solid products where
> either could have gotten the job done in the vast majority of
> applications.
>
> Where I am now there's been some historical use of the Actel 54SX parts,
> something I've never used. However, I do recall that -- as of a few years
> ago -- the deal with Actel was always that the parts were antifuse-based,
> so
> while you _might_ be able to gain something in speed, you gave up a lot in
> the
> way of being able to issue field upgrades, bug fixes, etc. However, I now
> see
> that Actel has their ProASIC line of parts so they can perhaps compete
> somewhat closer to Xilinx and Altera than previously. Could anyone
> summarize
> how the ProASIC parts stack up to the contemporary Xilinx and Altera
> parts?
> (E.g., Xilinx Virtex II or 4, Altera Stratix II.) In particular I'm
> interested in:
>
> -- DSP usage. Things seemed to get a lot easier when Xilinx starrted
> introducing fixed DSP blocks (e.g., multiply-accumulate blocks) within the
> FPGA fabric.
> -- Embedded processor usage. I never used them, but Xilinx and Altera's
> embeeded "soft cores" (microblaze and NIOS) both seemed pretty neat, and
> Xilinx was offering ARM hard cores if you really wanted "big iron."
> -- Debugging support. Xilinx had some "soft probe" thing that would let
> you
> poke around the internal nets of the FPGA as it was running, and I believe
> Altera had something like this even before Xilinx.
> -- Tool support. I used to use Synplify for VHDL synthesis, which worked
> quite well. I tried Xilinx's built-in synthesis tool, and given the price
> (vs. Synplify), it was really pretty good as well.
>
> How does Actel performs in these area? I realize they're very general
> questions, but I'm trying to get a feeling for how viable ProASICs are for
> something like a software defined radio (i.e., plenty of "real" DSP,
> desire
> for some "supervisory" soft core CPU, etc.) vs. just going with what I
> know
> would work -- Xilinx or Altera.
>
> Thanks,
> ---Joel Kolstad
>
>


.