Xilinx finally updated ISE for windows 10

[asgard20032]

https://www.xilinx.com/support/download/index.html/content/xilinx/en/downloadNav/design-tools/14_7-windows.html

They simply made an installer for virtualbox + a vm with oracle linux running web ise for linux. Unfortunately, some feature does not work as of this release, such as plan ahead.

ISE Design Suite for Windows 10 supports Spartan®-6 only.

[Someone]

Doesn't save much download over the full linux 14.7 install and rolling your own VM.

[KE5FX]

Why doesn't 14.7 work under Windows 10 as-is?   Traditionally when Xilinx says that an OS is "unsupported," it just means that they don't guarantee that it works and won't provide customer support for it.

[daqq]

This Xilinx attitude is very vexing. According to the company the Spartan 6 series (and other related ones probably) will be available till 2027... with no support from up to date tools apparently. Basically it seems that the company does not simply care about their prior devices and the customers using or wanting to use them... even programming (burning firmware into) a legacy device (CoolRunner II) is a hassle.

The Vivado tool is great, but support for legacy devices would be even better... or at least a 7 or newer series device that comes in non-BGA packages.

[asgard20032]

Doesn't save much download over the full linux 14.7 install and rolling your own VM.

Was never successful at installing ISE on a linux vm. Maybe because I tried it under a recent Ubuntu (in 2015) and fedora (2015). Is there are a specific version I should use to install ISE?

[bingo600]

I'm using ISE 14.7 in a Linux Mint 17.3  (x64)

It takes a bit of "magic" to get a few of the tools to work , mostly copying & symlinking a few shared libs.

But i got it all to work.

/Bingo

Tip:
This one helped me a ot
http://svenand.blogdrive.com/archive/102.html

And remember this one for impact
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/xilinx-ise-14-7-to-support-windows-10-by-the-end-of-the-year-(time-machine-)/msg1119207/#msg1119207

[asgard20032]

I'm using ISE 14.7 in a Linux Mint 17.3  (x64)

It takes a bit of "magic" to get a few of the tools to work , mostly copying & symlinking a few shared libs.

But i got it all to work.

/Bingo

I need a guide to make that thing work. I got 4 xilinx board i never used because i never was able to install ISE. I want to use them during the holiday. Also, got a course at university where I will have to work with a spartan 6 ; High speed digital course. I have to make that thing work in my computer.

[bingo600]

See above

[Bassman59]

Doesn't save much download over the full linux 14.7 install and rolling your own VM.

Was never successful at installing ISE on a linux vm. Maybe because I tried it under a recent Ubuntu (in 2015) and fedora (2015). Is there are a specific version I should use to install ISE?

I found it easiest to create a Windows 7 VM.

[SiliconWizard]

This Xilinx attitude is very vexing. According to the company the Spartan 6 series (and other related ones probably) will be available till 2027... with no support from up to date tools apparently. Basically it seems that the company does not simply care about their prior devices and the customers using or wanting to use them... even programming (burning firmware into) a legacy device (CoolRunner II) is a hassle.

No more update for the Spartan 6 series is more than vexing, it's totally infuriating. That basically conveys the message that new developments should be done on the newer series. Which is not only very pushy, but bad news for individuals and small companies. The Spartan 7 line has only been shipping  for a little while and still hard to get ahold of, and is the only real replacement for the Spartan 6 line. The Artix 7 is not quite a replacement in my opinion. Bad news is, the Spartan 7 is only available in big BGA-like packages (and so is the Artix 7 anyway). I can understand they wanted to push a new tool (Vivado) on the market, but why did they decide to stop maintaining ISE, the only tool available for still-current products?!

[asgard20032]

Well, it is a great thing they decided to offer a VM for ISE. Although, it shouldn't be the official way to run it on windows 10. It should be more like you need a portable, always working version of ISE that OS update/upgrade won't break, here is it. Also, they should have based it on something better supported (more software available), like Ubuntu (LTS of course), debian... Need git? sudo apt-get install git. You want to use another editor, no problem, just install it. But on oracle Linux is not a general purpose distro with a big repo.

Well, that is my point of view, they just missed a big occasion to do the thing right.

- Use a general purpose distro
- Package it for virtual box AND vmware
- Don't use that as a remedy to make it windows 10 compliant, but as a bonus. In 10 years, a still working solution to make ISE work, its a big plus. But it shouldn't prevent you to at least make ISE work in windows 10
- Everyone happy

[asgard20032]

This Xilinx attitude is very vexing. According to the company the Spartan 6 series (and other related ones probably) will be available till 2027... with no support from up to date tools apparently. Basically it seems that the company does not simply care about their prior devices and the customers using or wanting to use them... even programming (burning firmware into) a legacy device (CoolRunner II) is a hassle.

No more update for the Spartan 6 series is more than vexing, it's totally infuriating. That basically conveys the message that new developments should be done on the newer series. Which is not only very pushy, but bad news for individuals and small companies. The Spartan 7 line has only been shipping  for a little while and still hard to get ahold of, and is the only real replacement for the Spartan 6 line. The Artix 7 is not quite a replacement in my opinion. Bad news is, the Spartan 7 is only available in big BGA-like packages (and so is the Artix 7 anyway). I can understand they wanted to push a new tool (Vivado) on the market, but why did they decide to stop maintaining ISE, the only tool available for still-current products?!

In low end market (and I am not talking about glue logic like market), spartan 6 was one of the best chip, price wise. You get so many for your money, in an easy to use package. For startup and small business, they get everything they dream off. If only xilinx would support those in vivado, they would make a massive hit to Altera/Intel. But with the new Max 10 series, that use the newer tool from Altera/Intel, it really hit hard the market that was once up to the spartan 6.

I am in a startup, and the choice between spartan 6 and the new max 10 will be hugely influenced by the availability and ease of use of tool. Spartan 6 already startup in bad shape compared to Max 10.
Our project involve driving some vga/dvi/low def hdmi, need to be in either qfn or tqfp. Tqfp is better for us. And need to be cheap enough (under 50$ for the FPGA + config memory). There are not that many device in that market.

[Bruce Abbott]

Unfortunately, some feature does not work... ISE Design Suite for Windows 10 supports Spartan®-6 only.

Yet another reason not to run Windows 10!

[SiliconWizard]

I am in a startup, and the choice between spartan 6 and the new max 10 will be hugely influenced by the availability and ease of use of tool. Spartan 6 already startup in bad shape compared to Max 10.
Our project involve driving some vga/dvi/low def hdmi, need to be in either qfn or tqfp. Tqfp is better for us. And need to be cheap enough (under 50$ for the FPGA + config memory). There are not that many device in that market.

I'm going to take a deeper look at the MAX10 series. They are available in a QFP144 package indeed, and for the whole product line, which is great. Prices seem to be higher than Spartan 6 equivalents though (but it may take a while to figure out how to really compare the two). I like the on-die flash for configuration (like with the Lattice parts), and the free Quartus Lite supports them.

I've mostly used Xilinx (Spartan 3, Spartan 6) and Lattice (MachXO2, ECP3). Beefed-up versions of MachXO2 would be great to have. The MachXO3 was a big disappointment in that regard (in my opinion anyway).

[mrflibble]

I need a guide to make that thing work. I got 4 xilinx board i never used because i never was able to install ISE. I want to use them during the holiday. Also, got a course at university where I will have to work with a spartan 6 ; High speed digital course. I have to make that thing work in my computer.

That link bingo posted has all the installer steps in it...

ISE 14.7 is hardly any trouble to get running. Certain older versions required some mucking about, but with 14.7 it's source the env script and go.

Well, and make sure the obligatory library packages are installed. Just did a quick trace on ise to get the runtime library dependencies. Mostly it's X11 related libs. With a bit of luck ISE will run on your ubuntu machine, because most libraries will already be installed. But in case it barfs on some libraries you can install the libs you need like so:

apt-get install libc6 libexpat1 libffi6 libfontconfig1 libfreetype6 libgcc1 libglib2.0-0 libice6 libpcre3 libpng12-0 libsm6 libuuid1 libx11-6 libxau6 libxcb1 libxcursor1 libxdmcp6 libxext6 libxfixes3 libxfixes-dev libxi6 libxinerama1 libxrandr2 libxrender1 zlib1g

That's the quick library package dependencies for ISE 14.7 based on my debian 8.9 (x64) box. That package list could probably be shorter, but too lazy to do proper rdepends right now.

[asmi]

No more update for the Spartan 6 series is more than vexing, it's totally infuriating. That basically conveys the message that new developments should be done on the newer series. Which is not only very pushy, but bad news for individuals and small companies. The Spartan 7 line has only been shipping  for a little while and still hard to get ahold of, and is the only real replacement for the Spartan 6 line. The Artix 7 is not quite a replacement in my opinion. Bad news is, the Spartan 7 is only available in big BGA-like packages (and so is the Artix 7 anyway). I can understand they wanted to push a new tool (Vivado) on the market, but why did they decide to stop maintaining ISE, the only tool available for still-current products?!

Lower-end S7's are supposed to come out in FBGA-196 package specifically designed to be fully broken out on 4 layers (that's what Xilinx rep has told me a while back). And 4 layers is a requirement anyways in many cases as most of high-speed interfaces require controlled impedance traces. And they are quite cheap so they won't break the bank.

[asmi]

I am in a startup, and the choice between spartan 6 and the new max 10 will be hugely influenced by the availability and ease of use of tool. Spartan 6 already startup in bad shape compared to Max 10.
Our project involve driving some vga/dvi/low def hdmi, need to be in either qfn or tqfp. Tqfp is better for us. And need to be cheap enough (under 50$ for the FPGA + config memory). There are not that many device in that market.

Vivado is SO MUCH better than ISE. And even "low speed HDMI" is actually quite fast (heck even spec's minimum 640x480@60fps at 25MHz pixel clock is 250 Mbps per lane!), so I'm not sure if you can get away with 2 layers and no controlled impedance. Once you have 4 layers though, breaking out BGAs is not that hard (as long as you don't need to escape every single IO pin), and soldering BGAs is easier than QFNs in my experience. If you take FBGA-256 with 1 mm ball pitch, you can route it out with very cheap 0.15/0.15/0.3 mm process that costs like $30-$50 for 10 boards 10x10 cm.