FPGA Altera Cyclone IV Development Kit vs FPGA Xilinx Spartan 6 Development Boar

[hussamaldean]

Hi all,
Which board is best for beginners and learning FPGA ?

regards

[endevor100]

When we were using DE2 board from Altera in school I found the simulator in their software to be barely (if at all) usable. Perhaps they've changed it since then, but I would download the software and try it before buying a board. For what it's worth the Cyclone FPGAs worked fine, we just programmed them first and then saw what happened with no simulation. Couldn't tell you if Xilinx is any better or worse because I have no experience with them.

[james_s]

It largely comes down to the development software, overall I find the Altera software a bit nicer, however Xilinx ISE has a better simulator IMO. Both FPGAs have similar features and use roughly the same code. It would help to know precisely what sort of stuff you want to do with it though.

[Daixiwen]

The simulator build in Altera's Quartus has never been good and if possible it better to use Modelsim instead. It's a lot more powerful, but has this typical Mentor Graphics unfriendly user interface so it needs some getting used to.
As for choosing between both kits, I agree that if you can you should download the software from both Altera and Xilinx, try to create a simple project and see which one you are the most comfortable with.

I'd avoid Altera's SoC platforms for now if you are a beginner. Altera's documentation for the software side of SoC is still crap and you need do try things a lot by yourself. The Cylcone IV platform is fine though, and you'll find a lot of docs and tutorials.

[marshallh]

Cyclone IV is supported by the current Quartus tools. Spartan6 is effectively EOL, requiring the old and crusty ISE that needs to be hacked to even run on Windows 10.

Also, with Quartus you will get Signaltap... absolutely the #1 reason to go with it, as it's an incredible learning and debugging tool. Xilinx's chipscope is paid only, and it's far inferior. Only until the most Vivado releases have they unlocked their ILA for free use, but Signaltap still beats it imo.

[hussamaldean]

I want an advice for starting with FPGA
now I am confused about which one shall buy
the price difference is huge between Altera and Xilinx

[Bassman59]

I want an advice for starting with FPGA
now I am confused about which one shall buy
the price difference is huge between Altera and Xilinx

It’s confusing because the question is too broad. Think about what you want to do with the FPGA, and use the project as your learning platform.

Then the problem will become: “Which FPGA board supports what I want to do?” That’s an easier question to answer.

[iMo]

There is a new release of the ISE 14.7 (Xilinx) for Win10 (Feb 2018) supporting Spartan6.
You may get Spartan6 boards for $20 (ie XC6LX16 with 32MB sdram).
For learning verilog/vhdl that is an optimal solution, imo.

[james_s]

The price is fairly comparable for a similar generation FPGA for either Altera or Xilinx. One of my favorite dev boards is the Alteral EP2C5T144C8 mini board which you can get from a lot of different Chinese sellers for around $15 including a programming cable. It's a rather old device but it's big enough to hold most beginner projects.

[asmi]

Also, with Quartus you will get Signaltap... absolutely the #1 reason to go with it, as it's an incredible learning and debugging tool. Xilinx's chipscope is paid only, and it's far inferior. Only until the most Vivado releases have they unlocked their ILA for free use, but Signaltap still beats it imo.

This is the only kind of good thing for Antel, the rest is universally in favor of Xilinx. 170+ free IPs (including memory controller - Antel HELLO! It's 2018 now ), completely free Microblaze softcore (none of that "economy" BS), and Xilinx documentation is eons better. ILA was free for at least a couple of years, and I personally only used it two times. If you need to use it very often, IMHO that means you're doing something wrong.

[rstofer]

I want an advice for starting with FPGA
now I am confused about which one shall buy
the price difference is huge between Altera and Xilinx

There are too many boards out there to make this comparison without specific models.  I would imagine that boards with similar features and capabilities would be similarly priced.  I have no idea what is coming out of China and no interest in finding out.  I have enough problems getting my projects to work without always wondering if the chip was actually a reject.

I have been buying boards from Digilent for a long time.  I can't afford the very expensive boards but they make some lower priced boards with decent features.

The question shouldn't be 'which board to start with?', it should be 'here's what I want to do, now which board should I buy?'.  Budget is another factor to put on the table.

[asmi]

So are you saying that it is now the case that any configuration of MB soft core is free in Webpack whether Vivado or ISE / Spartan 3/6?    Does that include all relevant SDK tools and peripheral IPs reasonably needed at this point?

It's free for any 7 series (and US/US+) FPGAs and SoCs, SDK and 170+ IPs are free as well, and there are a lot of useful IPs in that list. You can even build multi-core/triple modular redundancy systems (free IPs for that are included). Most of these IPs connect through AXI/AXIS bus, so building a system in many cases (if you only use these pre-packaged IPs) is really just a mouse job with no HDL code involved. MB softcore can be configured to have all features required to run Linux, and there is a Linux build designed specifically for the core.

Lattice actually comes out the "hobbyist friendly soft core" winner here (at least in the past) due to Mico32 being freely available.  Pity that dealing with Lattice (and to some extent X/AI) is so hobbyist unfriendly in general, Altera probably being the best of the bunch as for web site / licensing hurdles et. al.

For hobbyists like me who make their own boards, Xilinx wins hands down due to free IPs like DDR2/3/3L/4 memory controller, aforementioned Microblaze-related infrastructure, 10/100 MBit Ethernet MAC, FFT core, DDS waveform generator, memory-mapped PCI Express core, all AXI/AXIS infrastructure cores, and many others.
And if you want to make your own, just implement an AXI/AXIS interface, and this will allow you to connect your module to just about anything. There is also free AXI Verification IP that makes writing testbenches much easier as it provides an abstraction layer so that you can write your code in terms of AXI transactions, and not individual signals. It's written in SystemVerilog with the full source code available, as well as very comprehensive demo project and detailed documentation explaining how to use the core.
No other vendor comes even close to all of that. Which is a shame, as competition is always good thing for end users.

[rstofer]

Some years back, I got interested in Altera and installed the toolchain.  I played with the NIOS example and then, for some reason, I read the license terms for the tools.

Altera reserved the right to cancel the license at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all.  Whatever rights I had when I downloaded the software came to an end - at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all.

I went through this with UCSD Pascal in the '80s where the university cancelled ALL outstanding licenses so that they could sell the software to a vendor and the vendor could re-license it.  The software promptly died, never to be heard from again.

I don't know if Altera has changed their terms and conditions.  I know that I have no interest in finding out.

[asmi]

If you really work for a company on commercial projects, who cares about a few k$ on an IP? If I can save myself 100 hours, I will happily pay $5k~$10k on a commercial, robust IP core.

I work with FPGA as a hobby, so paying for IPs is a non-starter. And my life principles don't allow me to use pirated software even for non-commercial purposes.

[rstofer]

Xilinx Vivado does provide the Microblaze IP and several peripherals along with a memory controller as part of the webpack (free) version.  in general this will require a more modern chip like the Artix 7.

The Vivado toolchain is quite nice.  It's different than ISE so it's taking time to get used to the changes but it works really well.

I guess I'll just stick with Xilinx and Digilent.

My uses are strictly hobby grade and I clearly can't afford any commercial software.

[NorthGuy]

The Vivado toolchain is quite nice.  It's different than ISE so it's taking time to get used to the changes but it works really well.

I agree Vivado approach is somewhat better than ISE, but it is slow and buggy

At any rate, I don't think Vivado supports Spartan-6, and that's, IMHO, is a very serious argument against purchasing Sparan-6 boards. I'd go with 7-series board instead.

[rstofer]

I agree Vivado approach is somewhat better than ISE, but it is slow and buggy

At any rate, I don't think Vivado supports Spartan-6, and that's, IMHO, is a very serious argument against purchasing Sparan-6 boards. I'd go with 7-series board instead.

Definitely the 7 series devices.  You can get a lot of chip for the money with the Arty 7 (Artix 7 chip). I have read mixed reviews on the speed of Vivado.  I thought it was horribly slow so I built up a new PC to throw horsepower and cores at the synthesis.  I haven't heard of or run across actual bugs.  Then again, my projects are relatively simple so if the problems are at the boundaries, I sure won't find them.

I keep ISE 14.7 around because I have a bunch of Spartan 3 boards and I don't plan to port the projects but all new projects are using Vivado.  With the PC upgrade, I am happy with the toolchain.  I'm not an expert but that In-circuit Logic Analyzer (ILA) tool is pretty neat!

It is also nice that I can get the Microblaze IP for free.  I haven't used it but I did build up a couple of example projects.