Laptop for FPGA design? [FPGA]

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From: Pete Fraser on 3 Mar 2010 16:19

"Jason Thibodeau" <jason.p.thibodeau(a)gmail.com> wrote in message
news:hmmfsq$gvr$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...
> On 03/03/2010 11:20 AM, emeb wrote:

>> What size of designs are you working on? FWIW, I've had good luck
>> doing smaller stuff in WinXP running from the Bootcamp partition on a
>> MacBook using VMware. I've also gotten stuff built on an EEE901A with
>> WebPack 10.1 under EEEbuntu.
>
> I think it is important to note the size of your designs. I actually use
> an HP mini 210HD for a lot of my designs. I run Fedora 12, and ISE 11.1.
> Sure its not as speedy as can be, but it gets the job done.

It varies.
My current design is very small (XC3S250E).
Mostly I design with XC5VSX50T, but I'm a consultant, so it's whatever the
client wants.
Typically the SX50T is a nice sweet spot for price / performance for video
processing.
My current project is audio, hence the tiny part.

Pete

From: rickman on 3 Mar 2010 21:57

On Mar 3, 4:19 pm, "Pete Fraser" <pfra...(a)covad.net> wrote:
> "Jason Thibodeau" <jason.p.thibod...(a)gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:hmmfsq$gvr$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...
>
> > On 03/03/2010 11:20 AM, emeb wrote:
> >> What size of designs are you working on? FWIW, I've had good luck
> >> doing smaller stuff in WinXP running from the Bootcamp partition on a
> >> MacBook using VMware. I've also gotten stuff built on an EEE901A with
> >> WebPack 10.1 under EEEbuntu.
>
> > I think it is important to note the size of your designs. I actually use
> > an HP mini 210HD for a lot of my designs. I run Fedora 12, and ISE 11.1..
> > Sure its not as speedy as can be, but it gets the job done.
>
> It varies.
> My current design is very small (XC3S250E).
> Mostly I design with XC5VSX50T, but I'm a consultant, so it's whatever the
> client wants.
> Typically the SX50T is a nice sweet spot for price / performance for video
> processing.
> My current project is audio, hence the tiny part.

My personal preference is to optimize the part I deal with, the LCD.
My main requirement in the laptop I bought was a 17" screen and I
pretty much always go for the low price. I got a deal on a unit being
discontinued even though it has an AMD processor. The only
shortcoming is the small battery so it only runs and hour and a half
on battery. I spend hours writing code and looking at simulations,
but the time spent crunching the design or running the simulation is a
very small percentage of that.

For what you will pay for an i7 laptop you can by a low end unit today
and in two years also buy the i7 you are looking at now. So think of
it this way, the design software does not require so much more than it
did two years ago. So the low end laptop you buy today is more than
adequate for the job! If you later need the i7 laptop for some big
job you can buy one then for a lot less or an even better one for the
same price.

On the other hand, I suggest that you spend time and money on a backup
procedure and use it religiously. No machine is immune from hard
drive crashes and a laptop is especially bad. Worse, if you are
traveling with it, it can be stolen. So make sure your backups are
separate and secure. US Mail will safely transport CD/DVDs to the
repository of your choice.

BTW, for a simulator I find the Aldec software to be good. I seem to
have very little trouble with it while every version of Modelsim I've
ever used seems to have at least one problem, a memory leak (or so I
suspect) that crashes the program after some arbitrary amount of
time. But then I haven't used Modelsim in three or four years.

Rick

From: Adam Górski on 4 Mar 2010 07:42

Pete Fraser pisze:
> I'm going to be travelling soon, and will continue to
> do FPGA design from the road. I'll need to get a
> new laptop for this.
>
> Any thoughts?
> I think something based on the Core i7-620M might
> be fast enough and low power, but they seem rare.
> Looks like I'll probably end up with something with
> a Core i7-720QM or a Core i7-820QM.
> Anybody here have any experience with on of these
> machines? Is there another processor I should be looking at?
>
> The obvious OS with a new machine would be Windows 7,
> 64-bit, but I'm not sure my software will run on that.
> I'm running ISE Foundation 10.1 (and don't plan on
> upgrading quite yet). I also use Modelsim XE, but will
> be upgrading to Modelsim PE or Aldec.
>
> It's not clear what software runs on what OS. It seems
> that I might be safer with 32-bit XP for the Modelsim
> and the Xilinx software. Windows 7 Professional
> seems to have a downgrade option to XP. Does that
> mean I choose to install one or the other OS, or can
> I install both and switch between them? 7 Pro seems
> to have some sort of XP mode. Will that work for these
> tools? Is there a performance penalty over a real XP
> installation? Can I emulate XP 32-bit under W7 64-bit?
>
> Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.
>
> Pete
>
>

Use Remote desktop or similar .
You can have really powerful PC for fpga compilation this way.
If you have inet connection of course.

Adam

From: kkoorndyk on 4 Mar 2010 09:10

From: rickman on 4 Mar 2010 17:59

On Mar 4, 7:42 am, Adam Górski <totutousungors...(a)malpawp.pl> wrote:
> Pete Fraser pisze:
>
>
>
> > I'm going to be travelling soon, and will continue to
> > do FPGA design from the road. I'll need to get a
> > new laptop for this.
>
> > Any thoughts?
> > I think something based on the Core i7-620M might
> > be fast enough and low power, but they seem rare.
> > Looks like I'll probably end up with something with
> > a Core i7-720QM or a Core i7-820QM.
> > Anybody here have any experience with on of these
> > machines? Is there another processor I should be looking at?
>
> > The obvious OS with a new machine would be Windows 7,
> > 64-bit, but I'm not sure my software will run on that.
> > I'm running ISE Foundation 10.1 (and don't plan on
> > upgrading quite yet). I also use Modelsim XE, but will
> > be upgrading to Modelsim PE or Aldec.
>
> > It's not clear what software runs on what OS. It seems
> > that I might be safer with 32-bit XP for the Modelsim
> > and the Xilinx software. Windows 7 Professional
> > seems to have a downgrade option to XP. Does that
> > mean I choose to install one or the other OS, or can
> > I install both and switch between them? 7 Pro seems
> > to have some sort of XP mode. Will that work for these
> > tools? Is there a performance penalty over a real XP
> > installation? Can I emulate XP 32-bit under W7 64-bit?
>
> > Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions.
>
> > Pete
>
> Use Remote desktop or similar .
> You can have really powerful PC for fpga compilation this way.
> If you have inet connection of course.
>
> Adam

Way back when, this software was purchased (PC Anywhere sticks in my
mind). Then I believe MS included it with WinXP, that was how IT used
to "fix" my PC. But I see now it is back to being commercial
software. This this software different somehow than the stuff they
had in WinXP or is that gone again?

Rick

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