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Geeeeee, you go out for a 4 hour lunch, and suddenly there are 10
messages on a subject, and some emails telling me to go read the
news group. :-)
On 20 Jan 2006 12:14:44 -0800, comp.arch.fpga.FAQ@gmail.com wrote:
>Hello everyone
>
>While I was browsing the newsgroup, I noticed a lot of junk messages
>all over the place. Maybe we could get rid of some of them by setting
>up a newsgroup FAQ. This will hopefully makes things (a little) easier
>for those of us who use this newsgroup on a daily basis.
The web site www.fpga-faq.org has been created for just this purpose.
I host this, and have paid for it out of my own back pocket, as my
gift to the FPGA community. I have been doing this since 1998.
I gladly accept and publish articles for inclusion in the FAQ from
anyone willing to write on any relevant subject. I retain editorial
control, which to date has been limited to for-mat-ting, punctuation;
and speellink.
>Yes, I KNOW about that one.
>
>Do you really think our first time visitors visit that site before
>doing their first post? Just cross-check the newsgroup and the FAQ and
>you will notice that people does not seem to care much about that
>site.
And another site would help this how??? :-)
>Besides, it's on Fliptronics site.
No it isn't. It is a completely separate site, hosted on a big expensive
server farm somewhere in Atlanta, by a company with its head office in
the UK, and the customer support all comes with a Bulgarian accent.
Fliptronics (and its vast engineering, management, and janitorial staff)
is located in California.
The FAQ web site is paid for by Fliptronics.
>They can take it down when ever they want.
But there has been no indication this is likely, right?
(By the way, I like the Royal "They" a lot)
>The topics I had in mind were things like
>
> .... list of topics ....
If you are willing to write these, I would be glad to publish them
in the FAQ.
This wont change the fact that newbies may not read the FAQ first,
or even if they do, they wont figure out that it easier to ask the
question anyway, and often get a direct answer. Same goes for the
non-newbies.
>In any case, you guys could come with comments and suggestions. We
>could even send them to http://www.fpga-faq.org, if you like that
>better.
This would certainly be my preference.
>your anonymous Dr FAQ
On the other hand, I prefer people posting to the news group to
not post anonymously. Casts a shadow over the rest of the posting.
>Symon Says:
>Good point. I wouldn't trust them either. Probably run by some dodgy
>fly-by-night bloke.
>Good luck, Syms.
Thanks Syms. You owe me another lunch next time you are in town.
(And I notice you again posted "Freidin's Clock Aligner" circuit
again, and failed to give attribution. If you do it again you will
owe me a desert of my choosing (triple chocolate decadence cake)).
>Peter Alfke
>Symon, maybe this was meant in jest, but that is hard to tell.
Good news Peter, Symon is jesting
>Fliptronics is owned and run by Philip Freidin, who definitely is not a
>"dodgy fly-by-night bloke".
>I have known Philip for over 25 years. We have worked together in two
>companies, and while we may have had our fights, I deeply repect him
>for his serious dedication and his competence and tenacity.
>So, please save those insulting remarks for more deserving "blokes".
And extra thanks for the above. I owe you a desert :-)
>- Brian
>I can hear Philip laughing from here.
That's damn good hearing, half way around the world :-)
ROTFLMAO
>(in case it's not obvious: he's left it up for about a decade to my
>knowledge, maybe longer. I don't think he's in a hurry to take it down)
Up for 8 years, no intention to take it down ever.
>Tim Wescott
>This one is good. It isn't really restricted to DSP, even though it's
>billed that way: http://users.erols.com/jyavins/procfaq.htm
Thanks for this Tim. I'll add a link to it.
For those of you who are curious, here are some stats from the
www.fpga-faq.org web site.
These are averages:
1200 visitors per day, 35000 per month
5000 pages fetched per day, 176000 per month
323 MBytes traffic per day, 11 GBytes traffic per month
16000 unique sites per month
73 email address trawling scumbags blocked per month
99.5% of all page requests are served correctly (others are for
incorrectly formed URLs)
670 MBytes Site storage
4100 pages of content (most is the archive of the news group)
Operating systems (of the site visitors)
75% of user systems are running Windows
5.4% of user systems are running Linux
Browsers (of the site visitors)
52.6 % MS Internet Explorer
22.3 % Firefox
16.1 % Unknown
4% Mozilla
1.8% Opera
1.4% Netscape
10.4% of visitors add the site to their favorites/bookmarks list.
>PS. we probably need one for the VHDL and Verilog groups too :(
These exist too:
http://www.vhdl.org/comp.lang.vhdl/FAQ1.html
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/verilog-faq/
a Google search will find dozens of other VHDL and Verilog FAQs
All contributions to the FAQ are gladly accepted.
Philip Freidin
===================
Philip Freidin
philip.freidin@fpga-faq.org
Host for WWW.FPGA-FAQ.ORG
Article: 95151Hello Phil, > > But have incomes really been increasing over the last 20 years? ... Inflation adjusted, not lately (last couple years or so). We will have to accept at some point that there will be some evening out in the standard of living between the US and Asia. > As far as other ways the US is declining: Well one of the big ones is that we > have zero to slightly negative savings rates now. That's not sustainable > longterm. Sure our real estate prices have gone up in the last few years, but > that's mostly just paper gain (If you sell your house, you still need > somewhere to live so if you buy another house you end up paying more anyway). > There are some folks who sold at the peak a half year ago and are now waiting in a rental for the bubble to deflate. Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.comArticle: 95152
Irrelevant, stupid, racist, and worse. That's what the thread "shooting ourselves in thefoot" is. But it received over 100 postings in a day, mostly from people that have nothing meaningful to say. Well, most of the idiotic postings come cross-posted from other newsgroups. Our best response will be to let this embarrassing nonsense burn out. Just ignore it. It would be a shame if our relatively sane newsgroup would get infected by this brainless drivel. Peter AlfkeArticle: 95153
Hi I will play around with XC95xxx and I'm wondering if someone can tell me if the parallel JTAG cable schematic found in the documentation is worth to build ... I'm also looking for supplier of PLCC to DIP socket adapter, I know Aries makes somes , any others cheap supplier ? :-)Article: 95154
Phil Tomson wrote: > Though, I do wonder: once we have an XDL parser, what's the next step? > > Phil Umm, pretty much the same as the next step had someone given you the bitstream coding. XDL makes it nice because you can play with just one part of the implementation process and let the existing tools do the rest, rather than having to reinvent the entire implementation chain. What more could you want?Article: 95155
Peter Do not fuel the fire by alleging racism and the like, instead consider that the originator of the posting has a valid point as far as he /she is concerned and rebut solely in respect to the issue which is in my opinion (only) 'whether sharing knowledge is a dangerous practice in respect to maintaining a competitive edge'. MFT "Peter Alfke" <alfke@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message news:1137815335.194191.36320@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com... > Irrelevant, stupid, racist, and worse. > That's what the thread "shooting ourselves in thefoot" is. > But it received over 100 postings in a day, mostly from people that > have nothing meaningful to say. > Well, most of the idiotic postings come cross-posted from other > newsgroups. > > Our best response will be to let this embarrassing nonsense burn out. > Just ignore it. > It would be a shame if our relatively sane newsgroup would get infected > by this brainless drivel. > Peter Alfke >Article: 95156
Bryan Hackney wrote: > bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote: > > Bryan Hackney wrote: > > > >>Simon Peacock wrote: > >> > >>>sooner or later the system will reach balance.. we will all earn less... and > >>>therefore eat less Big Macs.. so weigh less... then we will all get paid > >>>less too and spend less ... > >>> > >> > >>There will be no balance. > >> > >>Europe is declining. > > > > > > Why do you think that? > > > > You're joking, right? You can start with an unsustainable social > support model, declining productivity (30 hour week), declining > native population, increasing illiterate immigrant population. The social support model is entirely sustainable - most of the major European countries are running budget deficits of around 3% or less (half of the current U.S. level) - and what we lose on feeding our kids properly, we recover on reduced expenditures on imprisoning uneducated and in-educatable adults. I don't know where you got your productivity figures. Go read Will Hutton's "The World We're In" ISBN: 0316860816 for a bunch of productivity figures that you won't like (and pleae do go back to his original sources - he cites them - before you complain). The declining native population maybe a problem if the trend continues for a few generations - but even then, evolution would sort it out. The immigrant population isn't illiterate. Their kids all go through the same education system as everybody else, and do almost as well as the natives, and many of the adults learn the local language (as I did in the Netherlands - it is no big deal). Europe does at least as well at absorbing immigrants as the U.S.A and Australia. > >>Africa and the Middle East will never go anywhere. > > > > > > Why do you think that? > > > > And, um, what has Africa ever contributed to the world? Us. > What has the Middle East contributed lately (excluding oil)? Lots of immigrant scholars. The social conditions you encourage to simplify the extraction of oil do make emmigration an attractive option for anybody who can practice their profession in another country. -- Bill Sloman, NijmegenArticle: 95157
Jim Thompson wrote: > On Fri, 20 Jan 2006 10:04:52 -0800, Don Bowey <dbowey@comcast.net> > wrote: > > >On 1/20/06 8:58 AM, in article > >1137776297.373102.256560@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com, "amyler@eircom.net" > ><amyler@eircom.net> wrote: > > > >> If you were a european I'd credit you with subtle use of irony.... > >> > >> But I'm sure you're a nice guy really :-) > >> > > > >No, he isn't. > > > [snip] > >Don > > You don't think I'm a nice guy? Why? Neither nice nor all that full of insight. I wonder how he is doing with his scheme to report me to the current version of the committee for Un-American activities ... No black helicopters so far, and the Australian security services didn't bother searching my suitcases when I entered the country a week or so ago. -- Bill Sloman, NijmegenArticle: 95158
Bryan Hackney wrote: > SioL wrote: > > "Lanarcam" <lanarcam1@yahoo.fr> wrote in message news:1137771805.545861.31220@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com... > > > >>Bryan Hackney wrote: > >> > >>>And, um, what has Africa ever contributed to the world? > >> > >>No idea? > > > > > > Homo Sapiens? > > > > Supposedly the first man or woman came from there. > > > > That's not certain, Try looking at the evidence from the DNA, dummy. >but we do know where Newton, Galileo and Chebyshev are from. Not really - we haven't got DNA from any of them, but we can be pretty confident that their ancestors came out of Africa. -- Bill Sloman, NijmegenArticle: 95159
Michael A. Terrell wrote: > Bryan Hackney wrote: > > > > bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote: > > > Bryan Hackney wrote: > > > > > >>Simon Peacock wrote: > > >> > > >>>sooner or later the system will reach balance.. we will all earn less... and > > >>>therefore eat less Big Macs.. so weigh less... then we will all get paid > > >>>less too and spend less ... > > >>> > > >> > > >>There will be no balance. > > >> > > >>Europe is declining. > > > > > > > > > Why do you think that? > > > > > > > You're joking, right? You can start with an unsustainable social > > support model, declining productivity (30 hour week), declining > > native population, increasing illiterate immigrant population. > > > > > > > >>Africa and the Middle East will never go anywhere. > > > > > > > > > Why do you think that? > > > > > > > And, um, what has Africa ever contributed to the world? What > > has the Middle East contributed lately (excluding oil)? > > > > [...] > > > > > > > > I'd call you pompous twit. We had a renaissance in the west some six > > > hundred years ago. It's still running - rather bumpily, and better in > > > some areas than others - but we still keep on doing better in one area > > > after another. > > > > > > > Whatever keeps you going. > > > Don't worry about Bill. He's the "Energizer Bunny" when it comes to > spreading European bullshit. You may see it as bullshit, but I guess your discrimination has to be totally shot if you can vote for Dubya. Found any weapons of mass destruction recently? -- Bill Sloman, NijmegenArticle: 95160
John Larkin wrote: > On Fri, 20 Jan 2006 20:40:48 +0100, Blade <hun@hun.kom> wrote: > > > >Strange. I always thought that Europe is declining because we are trying > >to follow the foolish american social model. > > Europe is declining because Europeans aren't breeding. So far, we > don't have that problem in the USA. Dear me. You have yet to prove that Europe is declining. If it were you'd have to prove that the decline was due to the failure of the native Europeans to reproduce at the replacement rate - most of us happen to think that the current population density would be unsustainably high if we weren't importing lots of stuff, so we aren't too worried about the prospect of a declining population twenty-odd years from now. And you seen happy to neglect the malnutrition problem that you do have in raising kids in the U.S. In Europe, former Yugoslavia, The Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania do worse, but everybody else does appreciably better. Persistent juvenile malnutrition isn't good for intellectual development, and we do seem to see a lot of evidence of this on this user group. -- Bill Sloman, NijmegenArticle: 95161
John Larkin wrote: > Do you know of any examples of high-tech electronics companies who > have done this? > > I just bought a building in downtown San Francisco, a few blocks from > City Hall, for about 75 times the square-foot cost you cite above. One > reason is that this is where the talent likes to live. > > John Besides myself, three of the companies I've purchased pick and place machines from, and one of the two reflow ovens I've purchased. All have there businesses established in, or just outside of, small farming towns in Texas, Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri. The texas company was the largest, probably the largest employer in the town with about 200 employees, in three renovated aggricultural wharehouses buildings totalling well over 100,000sqft. Full pcb line, a building full of plastic injection machines, and high tech clean room assembling high precision instruments and some military electronics. The Ohio and Indiana shops where similar, just smaller. The missouri shop was also pretty good sized, probably 100 plus heads. Many grew up in the area, went off to college, came back home and joined these established businesses and where also working the farm too. When I worked for Symbios In Kanasas, there were a number of staff that would leave for a couple days when it was time to harvest the milo or wheat, or it had just rained and they need to a couple days to get the tractor and grain drill in the field to plant seed. Then they would be back at work. Good engineers, not chasing high dollar city paychecks.Article: 95162
bill.sloman@ieee.org wrote: > Bryan Hackney wrote: > >>SioL wrote: >> >>>"Lanarcam" <lanarcam1@yahoo.fr> wrote in message news:1137771805.545861.31220@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com... >>> >>> >>>>Bryan Hackney wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>>>And, um, what has Africa ever contributed to the world? >>>> >>>>No idea? >>> >>> >>>Homo Sapiens? >>> >>>Supposedly the first man or woman came from there. >>> >> >>That's not certain, > > > Try looking at the evidence from the DNA, dummy. Make some sense, asshole. > > >>but we do know where Newton, Galileo and Chebyshev are from. > > > Not really - we haven't got DNA from any of them, but we can be pretty > confident that their ancestors came out of Africa. > Are you saying that an African's DNA is somehow a precursor to yours? Are you a Nazi? I stated obvious facts about African culture, and you start talking about DNA.Article: 95163
On Fri, 20 Jan 2006 16:02:05 -0800, David R Brooks wrote: > Richard Owlett wrote: > [snip] >> I remember a sophomore EE lab requiring us to design a 1 transistor amp. >> MANY of my classmates were going to supply tech requesting better than >> 1% tolerance on bias resistors. Had reason to suspect they had similar >> problems later. > > I had a corresponding experience in my first job (some 35 years ago). > Newly qualified, I was asked to design a simple Colpitts oscillator: 1 > transistor, around 2MHz. I fished out my slide-rule, & prepared for a > heavy afternoon's maths. > My mentor stepped in, & said (in effect) "I know that's how they teach > you in Uni, but it's not how we do it in the real world". His design > logic went: > 1. Supply voltage = 9V (that's what we've got available) > 2. Transistor = BC109 (the stores are knee-deep in them) > 3. Ic = 5mA (known by experience to work well) > 4. Bias chain current = Ic/10 (ditto) > 5. Vb = Vcc/3 (ditto) > Now solve out the resistors, & give me a parts list. > > He signed the list, I took it to the stores & got the bits, & 20 minutes > later, the oscillator was running. > > Theory vs Practice. > > "Theory: when you understand all about it, but can't make it work." > "Practice: when it works, but no-one knows why." > - Seen in a German office, 1974 (translation mine) A similar saying I have heard: In theory, theory and reality are the same, but in reality, they're different. --MacArticle: 95164
Phil Tomson wrote: > As far as other ways the US is declining: Well one of the big ones is that we > have zero to slightly negative savings rates now. That's not sustainable > longterm. Sure our real estate prices have gone up in the last few years, but > that's mostly just paper gain (If you sell your house, you still need > somewhere to live so if you buy another house you end up paying more anyway). Many are using their one time exemption to flee, where the equity will purchase a home and business free and clear before the bubble bursts. Often this is retirement driven, as the taxes on the now million dollar family tract home are excessive. But increasingly I've seen engineers that have been consulting pickup their families and expand their business outside the tech hubs. Pheonix and Utah have seen a huge influx of people from Calif with a half million dollars cash in hand to buy high end properties, and it's created a huge bubble in those markets too. The Small Business grants/loans are now distributed by state as well, to foster distribution of high tech jobs into the non-coastal areas to move the jobs, offsetting unemployment costs, and other social services costs, into stale agricultural areas that have been declining for the last several decades. The whole alternative energies program has similar provisions pushing targets to distribute the production of solar, wind and other production facilities away from existing costal centers and share the job/revenue benefits across the states instead of centralizing it again. The government is much more likely to help you in the form of tax breaks, incentive programs, and access to contracts if you get outside the big cities. So for those that want to follow the american dream and become a small business owner designing, building or selling software or high tech products there is a good reason to consider taking your equity, buying a home and business free and clear, and following that dream nearly debt free, worry free, as compared to sitting on a million dollar mortgage that the banker takes most of your paycheck with.Article: 95165
Peter Alfke wrote: > Irrelevant, stupid, racist, and worse. > That's what the thread "shooting ourselves in thefoot" is. > But it received over 100 postings in a day, mostly from people that > have nothing meaningful to say. > Well, most of the idiotic postings come cross-posted from other > newsgroups. Or avoid responding to those posts, email the authors, and build on positive messages and constructive ideas inside the thread. > Our best response will be to let this embarrassing nonsense burn out. > Just ignore it. > It would be a shame if our relatively sane newsgroup would get infected > by this brainless drivel. > Peter Alfke For you that may well have been better, certainly better than creating yet another thread to whine in.Article: 95166
On Fri, 20 Jan 2006 08:24:36 -0800, amyler wrote: > can we all drop this topic please? > > this newsgroup is supposed to be about fpga's, not personal opinions on > the pros and cons of working long hours versus having a work/life > balance. > > Alan You are cross-posting to 3 newsgroups. I guess you are reading in comp.arch.fpga? I am reading in sci.electronics.design. Anyway, this was a consummate troll. With minimal maintenance effort, the OP can probably get several hundred posts on this thread over the course of a week or so. No matter how much the topicality police complain. ;-) --MacArticle: 95167
Greetings, I've used the Altera/Quartus II tool set for a previous project, and my next project will likely use the Xilinx/ISE toolset. In Quartus II there is the ability to define I/O in the top module as virtual pins. This prevented logic from being synthesized away and having the I/O assigned to a real pin on the device. Does anybody now how to do this in the Xilinx/ISE tool set? Regards, Jeremy ----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups ----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =----Article: 95168
Keith O'Conor wrote: > Hi, > I'm trying to figure out the best way to sort a large amount > (thousands) of floats or fixed-point data on an FPGA. With this amount > of data, it needs to be stored in RAM because it obviously won't fit in > registers, but this means that there can only be one access to that RAM > every clock cycle. Great, you at least know where the bottleneck is. The first rule in configurable computing is to stop using central memories, as they are unavoidably single threaded. Using lut based rams suddenly gives you thousands of little memories with concurrent accesses. Frequently the next step is to stop thinking parallel, and go serial, which immediately suggests divide and conquer in a massively parallel way. Consider a 2 bit in, 2 bit out node with a tiny statemachine that resets on word clock, passes bits in to out till they are different, then latches one of those as the mux selector, and continues passing bits till the next word clock in this selected state. These butterflies can be cascaded 2^n deep to concurrently sort thousands of serial data streams with a one clock latency per stage, and a log2(width) latency for the whole sort. > Since any sorting algorithm will need access to at > least two pieces of data to compare, I can't figure out how to > parallelize the sorting. Has anyone got any experience in this area? I > would really appreciate any advice. > > Thanks, > Keith I hope this wasn't your class assignment in reconfigurable computing for parallel processing applications. Monday or tuesday I will post Beta-2 for FpgaC, which has LUT RAMs for small arrays along with structures and a some other improvements. If you aren't currently taking a parallel programming class, it might be useful to at least review the course notes from a major university and pickup one of the texts, as it will provide you a lot of insight about approaching these problems for traditional processors which can be easily applied to reconfigurable computing. http://sourceforge.net/projects/fpgac When the beta-2 is available for downloading look at the users manual in docs, and the examples. Setting up multiple stages of concurrent pipelines is pretty easy in traditional C, with a cute trick of building the procedure block backwards ... bottom to top data flow, rather than top to bottom. have fun, JohnArticle: 95169
Just thought I'd let everyone whos been waiting for it know right away: EDK 8.1 was released on Xilinx Subscribernet last night!! I know i have been counting days! Downloading it right now. Hope the mb-uclinux BSPs work out fine on this release. -abgoyalArticle: 95170
On 21 Jan 2006 00:14:29 -0800, abgoyal@gmail.com wrote: >Just thought I'd let everyone whos been waiting for it know right away: >EDK 8.1 was released on Xilinx Subscribernet last night!! > >I know i have been counting days! > >Downloading it right now. Hope the mb-uclinux BSPs work out fine on >this release. > >-abgoyal Where? I am unable to find it! ZaraArticle: 95171
"Rob" <robnstef@frontiernet.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:WrhAf.267$qg.174@news01.roc.ny... > Hello. > > Can anyone direct me to a piece of Xilinx literature that explains how to > load more than 1 config file into program flash (XCF16P). > > Many thanks, > Rob > http://help.xilant.com/FPGA:Multiboot Platform Flash support design revisions but not multi boot if you need to select which design starts then you need separate controller to select the active revsion this can be small microcontroller or PLD. but then if you have a PLD alredy then it makes more sense to use cheap SPI flash and forget the platfrom flash xilinx has some PLD based example to control the platform flash, loook at the their web AnttiArticle: 95172
":-)" <a@b.c> schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:b%iAf.37603$lf2.380997@wagner.videotron.net... > > Hi I will play around with XC95xxx and I'm wondering if someone can tell > me if the parallel JTAG cable schematic found in the documentation is > worth to build ... > > I'm also looking for supplier of PLCC to DIP socket adapter, I know Aries > makes somes , any others cheap supplier ? > > :-) if you just want to program the PLD just add 4 wires to LPT port that will do in most majority of case anttiArticle: 95173
:-) wrote: > Hi I will play around with XC95xxx and I'm wondering if someone can > tell me if the parallel JTAG cable schematic found in the documentation > is worth to build ... You'd be better off just buying the Digilent JTAG3 cable: http://www.digilentinc.com At $12, it's just not worth building your own. One was supplied with the Digilent Spartan-3 kit I've got, it works very well. > > I'm also looking for supplier of PLCC to DIP socket adapter, I know > Aries makes somes , any others cheap supplier ? Why not simply use a PLCC socket like I did: http://www.geocities.com/leon_heller/pld_starter.html LeonArticle: 95174
In article <3fjAf.9305$bF.2150@dukeread07>, Ray Andraka <ray@andraka.com> wrote: >Phil Tomson wrote: > >> Though, I do wonder: once we have an XDL parser, what's the next step? >> > >Umm, pretty much the same as the next step had someone given you the >bitstream coding. XDL makes it nice because you can play with just one >part of the implementation process and let the existing tools do the >rest, rather than having to reinvent the entire implementation chain. >What more could you want? Sure, I understand that. I guess to rephrase my question and expand it: if we had a an XDL parser and the ability to generate and modify XDL programatically (and this ability is potentially even more interesting than being able to parse XDL, I would think) how would you go about using a set of tools like that? I ask the question, because how the tool would be used (or how people would like to make use of the capability ) could help define the features the tool should have and how it should be developed. I'm looking for some early input in the design process. Since bitstreams will likely always be proprietary and it's agreed that XDL manipulation is the next best thing (at least for Xilinx parts), what's most important in an XDL tool suite? In looking at some XDL it just seems like a structural description of the design using a Xilinx 'library' (with placement info included). The format itself seems easy enough to parse, however the devil is in the details (knowing valid placements, routings, pins, finding equivilent mappings, etc.). While parsing might be easy, making changes or generating completely new XDL files and determining if they are correct could be very difficult - is the sort of info that's required even openly available (without NDA)? Seems like there are lots of possibilities including open source simulation/synthesis/translation/p&r tools, etc. and long term that might be the way some might want to use the capability to read(parse) and generate XDL. However, any of those would be very ambitious projects (and one wonders if XDL is the right place for doing some of those things). Short term, what gives the best 'bang for the buck'? ...and here's a concern I have: If an open source ecosystem were to grow up around XDL might Xilinx decide that they are uncomfortable with that and at some point in the future pull the plug by not including the XDL utility in their tool suite anylonger. The point being that we will still have to rely on some closed source tools (xdl -> ncd -> bitstream) which could disappear at any time or be changed so that they no longer operate the way they do now. Is it a valid concern? Phil
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