Electronics > Beginners

The mess of FPGA development

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rstofer:

--- Quote from: Ice-Tea on March 28, 2019, 03:48:32 pm ---Yes. Of which they will loose considerable amounts if people go shopping on the other side of the hedge because they are fed up with it.

--- End quote ---

Not really!  Real, paid, designers will always pick the latest and greatest chip because they don't want to design into an end-of-life situation.  Their bosses would worry greatly about obsolescence.

So, chips older than -7 just don't matter.  At best they are maintenance items, not recommended for new designs.  If anybody is designing into obsolete parts, they deserve what they get.  Worst case, dedicate a Win 7 machine to ISE 14.7.  I have a machine like that.  I don't use it much since I built a new go-fast Win 10 machine to support Vivado.  But ISE 14.7 also runs on Win 10 so it's not important.

There's probably nobody on this forum who can cause even a blip in Xilinx's revenues.  We just don't matter in the bigger scheme of things.  They are doing us a courtesy by giving the software away for free.  So, why do they give us the software?

Probably to get more eyeballs on the software.

People can bark at the moon all they want but the reality is this:  New chips, new software.  Old chips, old software.  Pretty simple!  And the moon doesn't care if people bark at it.

Ice-Tea:

--- Quote from: rstofer on March 28, 2019, 04:17:16 pm ---Not really!  Real, paid, designers will always pick the latest and greatest chip because they don't want to design into an end-of-life situation.  Their bosses would worry greatly about obsolescence.
--- End quote ---

Please. Plenty of markets that can't support the respin of a board or won't tolerate changing a resistor before requalifying or going through acceptance again for the entire product. I *am* a real, paid engineer and I have learned a long time ago that going for the most shiny new toy isn't always the best solution. FPGA lifecycles tend to be a *lot* longer than, say, consumer HW. For fun and giggles I checked on Digikey: Spartan II parts are shown as active.

Ice-Tea:

--- Quote from: rstofer on March 28, 2019, 04:17:16 pm ---There's probably nobody on this forum who can cause even a blip in Xilinx's revenues.

--- End quote ---

On past projects/employments TI and Broadcom would get their panties wet if we announced a new product. With another employer we had framework contracts with both Xilinx and Altera.

rstofer:

--- Quote from: Ice-Tea on March 28, 2019, 04:10:29 pm ---I'm well aware. But the argument works in the other direction as well: a vendor that supports devices for longer in their latest SW would have an additional notch on their scoresheet while selecting devices which would bind customers more closely ;)

--- End quote ---

It's the validation that is going to cost a ton of money.  Remember, routing and special features has to be perfect under some set of test designs and it also has to be perfect in terms of all user designs on the planet.  "It used to work under ISE!".  It would cost a ton of money to accommodate these obsolete devices.  I'll stand on multiple millions...  BTW, they also need to bring forward all of the warts and idiosyncrasies.  Why would they want to bring forward all of the warts.  That's what they are trying to get away from.  Start from scratch and leave out the warts!

I liken upgrading large software to poking on an inflated balloon.  You poke here, it bulges there.  You fix one problem and break three more.  At some point you give up and start over.  Just like the old days of FORTRAN:  The best programs were written after the programmer dropped the box of cards.

I doubt companies care much about a scoresheet.  They buy the latest and greatest devices to delay obsolescence.  But everybody knows that things change and it would be foolish to spend the money to add Spartan 2 to Vivado.  I like Spartan 2 (5V IO) and I have a couple of boards but I certainly don't expect Xilinx to add the device to Vivado.  ISE still works fine.  And it would be unfair to add Spartan 3 and not include Spartan 2.  What came before Spartan 2?  Why wouldn't they be included?  Somehow we need to kill off Windows 95 and Windows 3.

BTW, what's the advantage to Vivado over ISE if not for ILA?  The Vivado constraints file alone is enough to drive me back to Spartan 3s and ISE.  What a nightmare!

In my view, the learning curve for Vivado is MUCH steeper than for ISE.  Were I teaching my grandson about FPGAs, I might actually start with Spartan 3 boards and ISE.  At least to get started.

rstofer:
Nothing in Xilinx's decision says you can't design/buy/support obsolete chips.  You have today what you had then: ISE.  Go for it!

If your product can stand moving forward, well, there's a new toolchain.  Nobody is forcing you to use Spartan 2 for new designs but it you do, you will have to use the toolchain that supports the chip.  What's the big deal?  It's what everybody was using when the device was current.  Realistically, all of the project files will already be compatible with ISE and certainly not Vivado (especially the constraints file).

ISE works, it is still viable, and if you insist on using old devices, it's the toolchain of choice.

I worked in an industry where computers couldn't be upgraded, compilers couldn't be upgraded and source couldn't be changed without a MAJOR verification process.  It was too cumbersome to even contemplate.  So, we stayed with obsolete computers, obsolete compilers and obsolete software because they were PROVEN to get the right answers for our design process.

If you take the purported $200M and 1000 man-years, you can get to $200k/man-year.  Would I believe it would take more than 5 man-years to port the old devices?  Well, when ratioed against 1000 man-years for the project, sure!  I believe it could take 10 or 20 man-years to port the devices depending on how far back they went.  And no matter where they drove the stake, people would be upset that their favorite device wasn't included.

$200k/man-year seems about right, if not a little light.  Figure $150k for wages and 35% for overhead (employer social security, medical insurance, worker's compensation, paid vacations, sick leave, etc).

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