[chbot] FPGAs again ... Info so far

[Michael Field]

On 27/07/2011 10:11 p.m., Volker Kuhlmann wrote:
> Web edition usually means the design is uploaded to some website, and 
> the result downloaded. Same as not having a C compiler, but having to 
> use someone's online service for compiling.
The Web Edition does compile locally - I've just built a VGA controller 
without any internet connectivity.

As far as I can tell, the Quartus II free-to-use "Web Edition" software 
includes very limited "IP cores" (predesigned & verified things like DDR 
memory controllers), no version control or team-based design 
enhancements, no incremental compilation, no support for parallel builds 
and no support for FPGA based transceivers (which are not on the part 
that the DE0-nano uses anyway).

There is a "TalkBack" feature . When enabled it uploads metadata on your 
design and tool usage to Altera. In return using it enables some 
debugging features like "SignalTap II" and "SignalProbe". [quote] Altera 
provides the SignalTap II Logic Analyzer to help with the process of 
design debugging. This logic analyzer is a solution that allows you to 
examine the behavior of internal signals, without using extra I/O pins, 
while the design is running at full speed on an FPGA device. [/quote]

See http://www.altera.com/literature/po/ss_quartussevswe.pdf, 
http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/qts/qts_qii53009.pdf and 
http://www.altera.com/support/kdb/talkbackfaq.html for more info.

Altera do provide a free simulation package, the limitations are that it 
is 33% slower than the licensed version and only supports projects with 
less than 10,000 lines of executable code. This shouldn't be a problem 
for projects on the DE0-nano, which only has 22,000 logic elements.

Mike