ISE 14.6 - iMPACT crashes everytime it starts

Hello everyone,

I'm having a strange problem with iMPACT. Every time I start iMPACT by double clicking 'Configure Target Device' in ISE it crashes after a couple of seconds without displaying anything.

The lead up to this happening is a little weird and I'm not sure what is relevant or not. I'm working on a board that I designed with a Spartan 6 on it. Everything worked fine for a while, I was able to program it and the PROM through iMPACT many times. I have a USB connection that is not used for programming. When I went to test the functionality of the USB connection I left the JTAG programmer plugged in(the programing cable is JTAG-HS2 from Digilent). So I had the JTAG programmer plugged in at the same time as the USB cable. I'm guessing that there was a ground loop or something there because both cables were getting warm. I unplugged both immediately.

After plugging the programming cable back in iMPACT says it can't find the programming cable so I restarted ISE. After this I can't even open iMPACT from ISE anymore, even with no programming cable plugged in. iMPACT just crashes after a couple of seconds and I don't get any error message from ISE. I've reinstalled ISE then I downgraded to 14.6. Neither of these resolved the problem. I then downloaded Digilent's JTAG programming software and I was able to program the FPGA from that. So the physical programmer seems to be fine.

The only other thing that I can think could be a problem was I was changing the USB drivers during the time I had a ground loop and maybe I accidently changed the programmers drivers. But I would imagine that reinstalling should resolve this(plus Digilent's software doesn't seem to have a problem).

I don't have a ton of experience with ISE so it's hard for me to guess what could be causing this. Does anyone here have any ideas?

Thank you!

In case anyone else has this problem I found how to resolve it. If I delete the impact project file(.ipf) it would fix it. I guess this means I can never save my impact setup, but at least it works.

Good to know. Could be helpful for others.

In my opinion, ISE 14.6 is already antiquated. Vivado Suites are the way to go.

dpaul said:

Good to know. Could be helpful for others.

In my opinion, ISE 14.6 is already antiquated. Vivado Suites are the way to go.

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Vivado only supports newer devices.
The OP is using a spartan 6

dpaul said:

Vivado Suites are the way to go.

Click to expand...

TrickyDicky said:

Vivado only supports newer devices.

Click to expand...

I have only used ISE Design Suite 14.7. Could you guys tell me why Vivado seems to be better than ISE ?

CataM said:

I have only used ISE Design Suite 14.7. Could you guys tell me why Vivado seems to be better than ISE ?

Click to expand...

• Uses industry standard SDC (portable skill set).
• Fully Tcl scriptable you can write entire scripts to do everything for you design and never have to open the GUI.
• Single executable, doesn't have a zillion different programs you have to run separately (memory management of the program is much much better)
• Uses far less memory to implement a design (database is much more compact). If you script everything you don't even have to unload the design database when switching between implementation steps.
• 3 dimensional placement/routing, Timing, Wire length, and Congestion metrics. Results tend to be much more predictable
• Converges far faster on a finished design, that meets timing. Don't have to resort to things like using SmartXporer with multiple starting "seeds".
• Places and routes much faster than ISE for the exact same code (though admittedly I found early versions would sometimes fail to meet timing due partly to Vivado still having growing pains).
• It's the future of Xilinx, they won't release any new parts that will work on ISE, so if you want to use a Spartan 7 (when available) then you will have to switch anyway. Artix-7 and Zynq both can be implemented using ISE, but I think the support is not as good (Xilinx recommends using Vivado for any new designs done with either part).
• Supports a good number of new parts with the Webpack version (unlike ISE, which you need to buy a full license) "Vivado HL WebPACK Edition supports the following devices: Artix®-7 (XC7A15T, XC7A35T, XC7A50T, XC7A75T, XC7A100T, XC7A200T), Kintex®-7 (XC7K70T, XC7K160T), Kintex UltraScale™ (XCKU025 – XCKU035), Zynq®-7000 All Programmable SoC (XC7Z007S – XC7Z7030)."

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Oh, yeah some negatives are:

• Unstable simulator, crashes quite a bit, especially when messing with the wave window (haven't tried 2016.x yet).
• Still spotty support for SV, though there are undocumented switches (at least I can find it mentioned) to enable SV support, but it is hit or miss if something will work. Then if the synthesis tool supports it the simulator won't support the SV code :bang:
• implementation doesn't support register re-timing, which was in ISE, I find sometimes that is useful when the best way to code something is to code it such that it likely won't meet timing but is much easier to understand/maintain/code/etc, but with register re-timing turned on the logic (LUTs) are more balanced and registers are moved to balance the logic delays. I've resorted to doing this by hand and having to write the equivalent code in the comments to show that the logic is really simple, it's just that the tools won't re-time the registers.