Why does every opensource/open hardware project using FPGA are xilinx

[asgard20032]

Since I took interest in FPGA, I remarked that the majority of open source board use xilinx. Although, now with the new open source tool-chain, thing could change in favor of lattice. I find it a little bit strange, considering that xilinx is not the only big player in town, and also that Altera is very popular in university. Majority of project we see on the internet is made using some Altera board, like the DE2. And most hobbyist are student or graduated that do some fun. So its a little bit strange then that most board are xilinx. Which board?? Lets name a few:

- FPGA shield for arduino
- FPGA hat for Raspberry pi
- FPGA shield for beaglebone
- Papilio serie
- Mojo
- Many papilio clone
- Hackaday FPGA

I don't know of any cyclone open source board

Lattice:
Fleafpga
Nand2go or something like that don't remember the name.

On the AVR case, we understand that opensource scene settled on them because of the availability of gcc, but for xilinx, I can't see advantage/(or disadvantage) over Altera

[JPortici]

My bet:
Because somebody decided to make one at some point, so it was much easier to steal and rebadge than doing the hard work.

Same with avr, nobody really used them before they were popular, compared to pics. and why people would have settled with a mcu so expensive for the features it offered if not because then they could be spoonfed?
I'd like to remind you that "arduino" is a plain steal and rebadge of a previous open source project.

[bktemp]

Maybe it has some historical reasons: A couple of years ago Xilinx FPGAs had a better availability in small quanities. Xilinx also had more FPGAs in bigger QFP packages. If you start with FPGAs, you don't want to fiddle with high pin count BGA packages. 10 years ago making a 4 or 6 layer board was insanely expensive compared to todays cheap Chinese manufacturers. That's why my first board had a Xilinx FPGA.
If I compare Spartan-6 to Cyclone-V, I see some benefits: Every IO on Spartan-6 has a SERDES block, allowing highspeed interfaces like HDMI or LVDS. On Cyclone-V only a few pins have SERDES modules. Also Altera has no Cyclone-V devices in QFP packages. Cyclone-IV in largest QFP package (QFP144) has only 21 differential pairs, but using a Spartan-6 in QFP144 you get around 50 differential pairs. So using small packages Xilinx FPGAs are more flexible than Altera ones.
Maybe it is also the availability of an open source programmer: For Xilinx devices you can use a cheap FT2232 and xc3sprog for uploading the bitstream, so no need to buy an overpriced Xilinx programmer cable. I haven't seen anything similar for Altera devices, except the cheap Chinese Altera programmer cable clones.

[6thimage]

Maybe it is also the availability of an open source programmer: For Xilinx devices you can use a cheap FT2232 and xc3sprog for uploading the bitstream, so no need to buy an overpriced Xilinx programmer cable. I haven't seen anything similar for Altera devices, except the cheap Chinese Altera programmer cable clones.

This seems the most likely reason to me - a cheap and open source programming interface reduces the cost of the board and makes it easier (and cheaper) for the users of the board. If you are deciding between two boards, both around the same cost but one requires an additional cost (an expensive programmer, or a cheap imitation that might not work properly), why would you go for the more expensive option unless you have some reason for it (i.e. you are tied to a manufacturer). Most of the FPGA boards are targeted at either people who are new to FPGAs or people who are not tied to a manufacturer (mainly because if you are tied to a manufacturer - i.e. because your company/work dictates it - then you will be buying an official development board from them).

[TimCambridge]

Lattice: http://www.bugblat.com/products/pif/ 

--
Tim

[nctnico]

For Xilinx devices you can use a cheap FT2232 and xc3sprog for uploading the bitstream, so no need to buy an overpriced Xilinx programmer cable.

Even better: you can buy cloned Xilinx programmers for little money and they work perfectly with Xilinx' Impact tool.

[RoGeorge]

Also, there is a very simple schematic for a Xilinx JTAG using the parallel (LPT) PC port: http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/user_guides/xtp029.pdf
It worked for me with a Spartan II and IMPACT, but I didn't test it with newer FPGAs.

[joeqsmith]

Lattice?  Don't they make little wind up CPDLs? 

I have never looked for open source designs.  I have bought a few eval boards that have come with full documentation. 

Most of my home FPGA projects have been Altera or Xilinx based.  If I ever get off my lazy butt, I will do something with that ARTY board.

[stj]

xilinx gave away the developement software while the competitors where still charging for theirs.

this is also why microchip and atmel are so big now - they overtook Ti & Motorola by making the software & datasheets available to everybody - not just company's or people with big pockets.

[RoGeorge]

Almost all have a free (reduced) version, but the full IDE is usually expensive, including Xilinx Vivado. For Altera, there is even an open source alternative.

[stj]

i didnt mean now, i meant in the past. 

[Bud]

Lattice: http://www.bugblat.com/products/pif/ 

I do not get what it does and how to use it. Do they supply some sort of development tool with the board that you run on the Pi ?

[rstofer]

My guess is you use the Lattice software to build the image.  You absolutely wouldn't want to do this on the PI, even if software was available (it probably is).
Altera has been bought by Intel so I wouldn't think they will be catering to hobbyists.  Lattice is a pretty small player and that leaves Xilinx.

Xilinx was giving away their toolchain with a very few restrictions and now they are giving away their new toolchain (Vivado) and I don't think much is limited other than the target devices.  For hobbyists, it is probably necessary to you particular chips.  Like the Artix-7.

It is also necessary to install the older software if you plan to use older chips like Spartan 3.  This is known as WebPack ISE 14.7.  I have both installed on my machines.

Hint:  no matter how fast you think your computer is, compiling VHDL or Verilog from logic expressions to bit patterns will bring it to its knees!

[legacy]

Spartan 3.  This is known as WebPack ISe 14.7

ISE v10 is also required, here I have v10, v14.7 and Vivado

[legacy]

- Many papilio clone

which one?

[AndyC_772]

xilinx gave away the developement software while the competitors where still charging for theirs.

Quartus (and Max+II before it) have always been free, for every device of any conceivable interest to personal and small company users.

I've been using Cyclone series FPGAs since they first came out. Availability of free software and inexpensive programming hardware has never been an issue.

[dmills]

A lot of the hobbyist FPGA uses favour IO over compute power, and the Altera IO is just less flexible then the Xilinx equivalents, that thing with a slowish serdes on every IO is HUGE for radio and video and still significant for audio applications.

The Xilinx parts are also better behaved when it comes to mixing IO standards within a bank, less need to sweat ground bounce when mixing differential and single ended IO (The rules for this are a nightmare with the Cyclone 5s).

One other thing is that the Xilinx IP blocks that come in the free tools are actually usable without having the tools connected to the final hardware. You can instantiate a DDS/FFT/AES core or whatever in Vivado from the IP library and it will work on your final board without license driven time limits or need for the IDE to be connected via the programmer, this is not the case with Quartus for anything very interesting and the IP licenses can completely swamp the cost of the basic tools. 

IMHO The big thing Altera have going for them is the MAX-10 series of non volatile parts, some of which are single supply rail at friendly sorts of voltages.

73 Dan.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Xilinx have historically had cheaper lowest-end parts than Altera - not looked recently to see if this is still the case.
Availability of cheap devboards and programmers will also be a bigger influence than it is in industry

[joeqsmith]

xilinx gave away the developement software while the competitors where still charging for theirs.

Quartus (and Max+II before it) have always been free, for every device of any conceivable interest to personal and small company users.

I've been using Cyclone series FPGAs since they first came out. Availability of free software and inexpensive programming hardware has never been an issue.

I wish!!  I think in the early days we were paying 4 or 5K for a Magnum license.   When I bought it for home, they had a special deal for 1.5 or 2K.  Maybe 1K annual maint fee.   I played with their DOS based tools back in the late 80s? 

I have an old copy of Xilinx Foundation with the Aldec simulator (that caused the big lawsuit) and the old ViewDraw editor (Innovada, EPD and now Mentor). Before ISE, for work we used the Alliance with Synplify.  None of this was free...

Even my toe dip into the Lattice pool at was not free.  Not sure now.   

Reason I bought the ARTY board to play with at home is, it was fairly low cost and it came with a license for Vivado, of course locked to that part.   One day I will plug that board in....

I guess PALASM and OPEL were free....

[Tomorokoshi]

xilinx gave away the developement software while the competitors where still charging for theirs.

this is also why microchip and atmel are so big now - they overtook Ti & Motorola by making the software & datasheets available to everybody - not just company's or people with big pockets.

I had to suffer through this in slow motion.

Which gets chosen by most organizations:
Motorola CodeWarrior license obnoxiously attached to the network FlexLM server (more wicked to deal with than Microsoft and Apple combined)
compared to
Microchip practically giving away the local license keys

More than once I had to bring up the point to Motorola / ColdFire this question:
Are you in the processor business or the IDE / compiler business?

They tried to do both, and then lost both. Like anyone would use CodeWarrior for anything other than building for Motorola / ColdFire anyways.

I don't think it was even possible to check out the license - it had to be attached to the network. Hey Motorola! Guess what happens when one has to go to the customer to work on a problem and there isn't a network available?

Anyway enough ranting.

[rstofer]

xilinx gave away the developement software while the competitors where still charging for theirs.

Quartus (and Max+II before it) have always been free, for every device of any conceivable interest to personal and small company users.

I've been using Cyclone series FPGAs since they first came out. Availability of free software and inexpensive programming hardware has never been an issue.

Yes, Quartus has been free but up until recently, they had a big 'gotcha' in the Terms and Conditions.  They reserved the right to cancel the license for any reason whatsoever.  Or, no reason at all.

I went through this nonsense with UCSD Pascal back in the '80s.  Entire businesses were built around that OS and one day UCSD sold the rights and cancelled the licenses.  Huge problem!

When I saw the 'gotcha' I gave up on Altera and never looked back.  Xilinx hasn't been exactly 'free' for all chips but it has for the ones I use.

The manufacturers need to understand that they are in the chip business, not the software business.  I understand Vivado cost many multiple millions of dollars to create (I read the number somewhere but I can't find it!) and I can understand why they want to get their money back but I think they would do well to just sell more chips.

Support for the toolchain is probably another large cost.  Clearly, paying customers should get priority.  Hobbyists should expect to have to work through a forum.

[legacy]

- Many papilio clone

seriously, which one?
is there a clone of papilio ?
never seen 

[AndyC_772]

Yes, Quartus has been free but up until recently, they had a big 'gotcha' in the Terms and Conditions.  They reserved the right to cancel the license for any reason whatsoever.  Or, no reason at all.

They could stop making the chips themselves overnight too if they wanted. Both would be commercial suicide, but at least if they pull the software, any locally installed copies will still run. Quartus stopped requiring a user-specific licence file years ago.

On the other hand, if you can't buy the chips any more then your product line really is hosed.

[legacy]

- FPGA hat for Raspberry pi

also, this RPI's add on uses Lattice’s iCE40 FPGA

[legacy]

and this is another Icehat, it adds a Lattice iCE5LP4K-SG48 

[legacy]

sold by Farnell, LOGI Pi uses Xiling's Spartan-6 LX9 fpga 

[hamster_nz]

- Many papilio clone

seriously, which one?
is there a clone of papilio ?
never seen 

I was asked for help with to help with a clone, which had a Spartan3E-100 on it, rather then a -250 or -500 that they make.

They do exist - and as they are an Open design nothing stops people making them.

[legacy]

well, the Papilio/Pro is physically described by an EagleCad v6 project (schematic + board), so .. you can reuse and modify it as you want

the question is: I have never seen a clone around, neither on ebay, nor on hack-a-day (I have some difficulties with google at the moment),
so I wonder where did he see those clones. Personally I modified the original papilio/pro because I wanted to add a FeRAM's socket on the PCB

a personal project, never published (and not yet completed)

[asgard20032]

http://saanlima.com/store/index.php?route=product/product&path=62&product_id=51

[mac.6]

Well it' s not only opensource project. Amost all FPGA board I have seen in my professional life are Xilinx also.
Most of them were used for emulation/RTL development, from single Virtex7 board up to massive 12 to 16 ones, not even mentioning synopsys zebu machines.
The only time I have seen an altera part was on a specialized debugger/tracer in a startup.

[asgard20032]

Where I live (canada, quebec), every university use altera.

[james_s]

There are open source projects out there that use Altera chips, here's one for example http://searle.hostei.com/grant/Multicomp/

I've ported all sorts of stuff to that same dirt cheap dev board and have released a few projects of my own on the same board. Some of them are hosted on the site of a friend of mine.

http://www.notanon.com/fpga/williams-pinball-system-3-and-system-4-sound-board-in-an-fpga/2015/12/04/


I use both Xilinx and Altera because there are advantages and disadvantages of each, well more specifically the software used to develop for each. Altera USB programming cables are also far cheaper than Xilinx. I've never used Lattice parts because the software seems to be harder to get hold of and I haven't seen any development boards. The nice thing about FPGA stuff is that most designs can be made reasonably platform-agnostic. It's almost always developed in either VHDL or Verilog and as long as you don't directly instantiate device primitives in the code it's fairly easy to port from one chip to another.