Re: [oc] Ethernet Mac

[Graham Seaman <graham@collector.hscs.wmin.ac.uk>]

> Uh, "what?"  The above is semi-accurate and suggests you don't 
> understand these toolchains.  
I think there are some cross-purposes here: one of you is talking about
commercial EDA software which runs on Unix, the other about free (as in gpl)
EDA software... 

I'll try to comment on the ones I know a little about, but please excuse
me if I get things wrong - download them and get the current documentation
if you really want to be certain of what they can do! Most have
been created/developed quite recently and are still changing fast.

>I don't know anything about SAVANT or 
> FreeHDL, but it stands to reason that they output a standard netlist 
> (probably EDIF) and nothing more.
In my very limited understanding FreeHDL is not yet really usable
yet. Savant is perfectly usable for VHDL for simulation and has netlist
generation in progress. Ability of most of these tools to output EDIF
is limited by the fact that the spec for EDIF has to be paid for..

Among the free (gpl) tools there also Icarus, a Verilog compiler
which outputs XNF netlists:
http://icarus.com/eda/verilog/
Electric has a VHDL compiler and can be used both with MOSIS and 
(to a limited extent) FPGAs:
http://www.electriceditor.com/
Electric is probably the most complete of the free EDA programs,
having had a previous incarnation as a commercial program.

>  Alliance isn't a compiler - it's 
> the back-end place-and-route (PAR), bitstream generator, and other
> device-specific tools for supporting their parts STARTING with the
> netlist.  
I believe this is at cross-purposes: there is the Xilinx Alliance 
you're talking about, and Alliance the gpl-ed software which has a
back-end which handles both MOSIS and old Xilinx devices. The frontend
compiles a very limited subset of VHDL (this
may be very out-of-date information; the current version of the
free Alliance is at: http://www-asim.lip6.fr/alliance/ ).

I don't believe any of the free (gpl-ed) systems avoid the need
for the commercial place-and-route, bit-stream generation software
for any recent FPGAs. 

Hope that helps and isn't too inaccurate,

Graham