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Message
From: Michael Hordijk<hoffbrinkle@h...>
Date: Sat Feb 26 20:53:12 CET 2005
Subject: [oc] Re: what opensource tools to use
> I think there is at least one free (beer) simulator, and there is at
> least one open source simulator, but I'm not sure how they work. From
I've been using GHDL as much as I can for simulation. It's effective,
and pretty robust considering it's not that old. There's not much it can't
do (it can run a DLX processor and the LEON1 SPARC processor). It's a
native VHDL compiler (i.e. it does not translate to intermediate C/C++ or
anything). It's written in ADA as a front end to GCC. The developer is
easy to get a hold of and responsive to fixing bugs, and it's being actively
developed. http://ghdl.free.fr
> look at the manual, but it seems to suggest that using vendor-spefic
> parts, such as block RAMs, or ASIC multipliers or DSP blocks/slices,
I've had no problems using the above simulator with any of the Xilinx
cores I use. Obviously, inferred parts are no problem. It's compiled
everything I need from unisim and XilinxCoreLib with no problems. Supports
VHDL 2002, etc.
I would highly recommend it as an alternative. I haven't gotten to
using it on a large design, so I can't say how fast or slow it is compared
to, say, ModelSim or what have you. But "free" goes a long, long, long way
to making up for that. Think how much computing resources you could buy for
the cost of single SE floating license...
- hoffer
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