Recommended FPGA Families & Tools?

I'm just getting into FPGA design.  What are good FPGA vendors in terms of 
good chips, good tools and good support?

Also, if you've used the Cypress PSoC mixed analog & digital chips & tools, 
how did you find them?

- Chris 

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 21:32:24 GMT, "Chris Graham" <chrisgr@shaw.ca>
wrote:

>I'm just getting into FPGA design.  What are good FPGA vendors in terms of 
>good chips, good tools and good support?

Not claiming wide or deep knowledge of this subject but the Spartan 3
Starter Kit http://www.xilinx.com/products/spartan3/s3boards.htm is a
pretty good value.

Their Webpack software suite is on the CD with the starter kit or
available as a (large-ish) download.

Other good resources at http://www.fpga4fun.com/ and
http://www.digilent.us/index.cfm.

-- 
Rich Webb   Norfolk, VA

The two major vendors in the market today are xilinx and altera who
produce roughly equivelent devices from simple pals to system on a chip
scale fpga'a with all the design/simulation software provided.
There are differences in the design of the fpga's between to the two
manufacturers and my opinion is that xilinx produce the more
sophisticated devices with features such as 18x18 hardware multipliers
,multiple i/o standards and core voltages as low as 1.2 volts they are
however corespondingly more expensive.Altera devices are similar but I
always get the feeling that they are always one step behind in
producing new features.Other manufacturers are firms like
Cypress,philips etc

"Chris Graham" <chrisgr@shaw.ca> wrote in message 
news:ITWFd.78893$Xk.41672@pd7tw3no...
> I'm just getting into FPGA design.  What are good FPGA vendors in terms of 
> good chips, good tools and good support?
>
> Also, if you've used the Cypress PSoC mixed analog & digital chips & 
> tools, how did you find them?
>
> - Chris
>

Start here
http://www.fpga-faq.com/

The two big vendors are Altera and Xilinx

Altera www.altera.com
free software quartus2 web edition

Xilinx www.xilinx.com
free software xilinx web pack

xilinx based boards

 Xilinx Spartan3 starter kit with a 200K gate spartan3 fpga. US$99
 Made by www.digilentinc.com  who make addon boards
including usb , ethernet, adc, other modules like Hbridges , breadboard,
wirewrap boards etc

www.xess.com also have boards (amoung many others)
http://www.burched.biz/


http://www.fpga.org/links.html
http://www.fpga4fun.com/links.html

Alex Gibson 

"Jezwold" <edad3000@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message 
news:1105776644.036318.242110@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> The two major vendors in the market today are xilinx and altera who
> produce roughly equivelent devices from simple pals to system on a chip
> scale fpga'a with all the design/simulation software provided.
> There are differences in the design of the fpga's between to the two
> manufacturers and my opinion is that xilinx produce the more
> sophisticated devices with features such as 18x18 hardware multipliers
> ,multiple i/o standards and core voltages as low as 1.2 volts they are
> however corespondingly more expensive.Altera devices are similar but I
> always get the feeling that they are always one step behind in
> producing new features.Other manufacturers are firms like
> Cypress,philips etc



philips ?
Philips sold their cplds to xilinx, see coolrunner2 and xpla / coolrunner
http://www.xilinx.com/cpld/

others include
Actel , Atmel , Lattice ,
for a list of manufacturers
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Hardware/Programmable_Logic/FPGA/Manufacturers/

Alex Gibson 

While Xilinx and Altera are probably slated as the "two major vendors", 
there are still very good offering from companies like Actel 
(www.actel.com), QuickLogic (www.quicklogic.com), and Lattice 
(www.lattice.com).

Each have their own postiive and negative attributes.  Each have their own 
flavors of engineering boards.  Some have higher speed units (Actel offers 
parts approaching 500MHz speeds), etc.

Dave

"Jezwold" <edad3000@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message 
news:1105776644.036318.242110@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> The two major vendors in the market today are xilinx and altera who
> produce roughly equivelent devices from simple pals to system on a chip
> scale fpga'a with all the design/simulation software provided.
> There are differences in the design of the fpga's between to the two
> manufacturers and my opinion is that xilinx produce the more
> sophisticated devices with features such as 18x18 hardware multipliers
> ,multiple i/o standards and core voltages as low as 1.2 volts they are
> however corespondingly more expensive.Altera devices are similar but I
> always get the feeling that they are always one step behind in
> producing new features.Other manufacturers are firms like
> Cypress,philips etc
> 

Jezwold wrote:

> The two major vendors in the market today are xilinx and altera who
> produce roughly equivelent devices from simple pals to system on a chip
> scale fpga'a with all the design/simulation software provided.
> There are differences in the design of the fpga's between to the two
> manufacturers and my opinion is that xilinx produce the more
> sophisticated devices with features such as 18x18 hardware multipliers
> ,multiple i/o standards and core voltages as low as 1.2 volts they are
> however corespondingly more expensive.Altera devices are similar but I
> always get the feeling that they are always one step behind in
> producing new features.Other manufacturers are firms like
> Cypress,philips etc
> 
The one that I know of that's really different is Actel, which produce 
FPGA's based on non-volatile memories, either EEPROM or anti-fuse (the 
others are all RAM).  The non-volatile aspect gives an advantage for 
some applications because they are instant-on, unlike a RAM-based part 
which must be configured.  They are also much more sensitive to the 
needs of the military/space/aviation customer.

However, the design flow for an anti-fuse part becomes much more like an 
ASIC, with much greater attention being needed for verification because 
a boo-boo means burning and turning a chip, rather than just loading up 
a new configuration.

-- 

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Did I saw philips? sorry Ive got them on my mind at the moment:)

Chris:

Atmel offers 32 MC, 64 MC , 128 MC CPLDs -ATF15xx Family for 5V,
3.3 V Applications.
If you need an 8-bit Micro + FPGA look no further than the FPSLIC ;
Atmel has a Tools Promo- 50% off for FPSLIC .
http://www.atmel.com/products/FPSLIC/
Hey if you go with a Xilinx or Altera FPGA, think of an Atmel
Configurator
to configure your SRAM based FPGAs

On 27 Jan 2005 23:52:13 -0800, "Yad" <yad1@att.net> wrote:

>Chris:
>
>Atmel offers 32 MC, 64 MC , 128 MC CPLDs -ATF15xx Family for 5V,
>3.3 V Applications.
>If you need an 8-bit Micro + FPGA look no further than the FPSLIC ;
>Atmel has a Tools Promo- 50% off for FPSLIC .
>http://www.atmel.com/products/FPSLIC/

While I love Atmel's AVR chips, their licensing costs for System
Designer or the FPGA syntesis packages are way too expensive for us
little guys as compared to similar offerings from Altera or Xilinx.


-- 
Rich Webb   Norfolk, VA