which is the best xilinx or Altera in design support

[prakashvenugopal]

Hi,

Can you please tell me which FPGA is best Xilinx or Altera in Design support?


Regards,
V. Prakash

 

[TrickyDicky]

generally, the Quartus tools from altera do a better job than xilinx, especially in the synthesis.

 

[treqer]

I use both quartus and ise. here to simulate the use ise

 

[prakashvenugopal]

Hi,

How about the Design technical support? which is best? Xilinx or Altera?

 

[permute]

Altera's documentation is often useless or incorrect. Apparently this was not always the case, but in the last year I've been severely disappointed with altera's documentation. Documentation is often not clear, contradictory, or incorrect. The giant handbook tends to have pictures for the purpose of filling space.

Xilinx's documentation isn't perfect, but I place it far above Altera's.

as for support, that's really based on the size of your company and its support contracts.

 

[senmerida]

I prefer Xilinx than Altera. I think for your cause Xilinx is the one to use

 

[mrflibble]

I also prefer xilinx over altera. But mind you, that is based on information from several years ago. Things could easily have changed.

The single thing that sometimes has me considering Altera again is synthesis tools. Tools like synplify are out of reach for me, so it's either Quartus or ISE. And xst (xilinx synthesis tool) works nice and all, EXCEPT that it still is stuck in the previous decade. No SystemVerilog support whatsoever, which sometimes is quite annoying.

 

[guitarguy12387]

+1 for Xilinx

 

[treqer]

it so happened that I xilinx license with support and all the equipment. And Altera - lots of free chips and equipment including altera MPU. At work - xilinx. Household Products - altera-level cyclone - Cyclone 2 tqfp case.

---------- Post added at 15:28 ---------- Previous post was at 15:26 ----------

from 11 ISE simulator version is no worse than the altera. A simulator for two is not enough space in my head.

 

[istwok]

No question Xilinx has better support. With Altera your Service Request is handled on the web by people in China. The result is that you get only one communication a day and sometimes it takes multiple days to communicate a point because of the language barrier. When I have an issue it normally takes at least a week to convince the 1st level support person my issue is real so that they will escalate to the next level. Problems typically take 2 - 4 weeks to resolve. I wish I were joking.

In my opinion, Altera is doing their customers a huge disservice by not providing on-shore support. If you work at a big company and have dedicated support then good for you, the rest of us will be designing products with Xilinx.

 

[TrickyDicky]

Atera Support for IP is handled out of china, but if its a bug report its handled by people who seem to know what they're doing, and either UK or US based. Certain IP (like the PCIe core) is handled out of the UK.

 

[ads_ee]

I've dealt with support from both and I'd say Xilinx has better support and definitely better documentation. If you aren't using their document navigator you should.

I actually made a suggestion to the Altera documentation manager when I met him a few years ago that they stop adding fluff to their documentation...I even showed him examples of the BS they put in their documents touting how they're parts are so great you should use them. I did notice after telling the manager this the next documents that appeared seemed to have cut down on the fluff factor. Xilinx has significantly less fluff and if it's there it's restricted to the first section.

Tricky you should try out Vivado, which has a synth front end that was bought from someone. It has much better support for SV and uses industry standard sdc (xdc) constraints . The major drawback is the lack of "knobs" you can play around with in synthesis like xst had.

Don't even get me started on IP. In my experience I think Xilinx IP is better tested than Altera IP perhaps this has something to do with Altera's outsourced IP design.

Of course YMMV as I've usually worked for high profile customers of both Xilinx and Altera.

 

[barry]

I used to use Altera, but their support was so terrible I refuse to use them any longer. I would sooner design with vacuum tubes than ever deal with Altera again. I use Xilinx, and also Lattice. Lattice has a lot of nice features, but they don't have the very-high performance devices like Xilinx.

 

[ads_ee]

I would sooner design with vacuum tubes than ever deal with Altera again.

Barry, how many acres do you think it would take to implement 10G Ethernet using those FPVTs (field programmable vacuum tubes)? ;-)

 

[mrflibble]

Tricky you should try out Vivado, which has a synth front end that was bought from someone. It has much better support for SV and uses industry standard sdc (xdc) constraints . The major drawback is the lack of "knobs" you can play around with in synthesis like xst had.

The major drawback is that Vivado doesn't support older devices such as spartan/virtex 6. But that's just my personal gripe.

 

[prakashvenugopal]

Hi,

what is the major difference between ISE and vivado? will vidado support spartan 3AN family?

 

[TrickyDicky]

Vivado is the ISE replacement. it only supports Virtex7 parts

 

[barry]

Barry, how many acres do you think it would take to implement 10G Ethernet using those FPVTs (field programmable vacuum tubes)? ;-)

It would probably STILL get completed faster than an Altera support resolution.

 

[Zerox100]

I often use xilinx

 

[AlteraNow]

For last three years I have been working with xilinx. It was very difficult to learn from scratch. I am still not a master by any means but I know enough to get the job done. Recently I lost my job, so the company laptop. I tried to install xilinx free ise webpack on my home laptop. xilinx was keep asking for corporate e-mail that I don’t have anymore. So what to do without corporate e-mail? The answer is nothing I could do. I tried many different things but finally I said screw it and started to look at Altera. BIG difference, easy to use softwares and tutorials helped me out with a quick boost. I am sure I will spend considerable amount of time to learn Altera environment but it seems worth it. Thanks Altera, I am glad to use your product.

- - - Updated - - -

For last three years I have been working with xilinx. It was very difficult to learn from scratch. I am still not a master by any means but I know enough to get the job done. Recently I lost my job, so the company laptop. I tried to install xilinx free ise webpack on my home laptop. xilinx was keep asking for corporate e-mail that I don’t have anymore. So what to do without corporate e-mail? The answer is nothing I could do. I tried many different things but finally I said screw it and started to look at Altera. BIG difference, easy to use softwares and tutorials helped me out with a quick boost. I am sure I will spend considerable amount of time to learn Altera environment but it seems worth it. Thanks Altera, I am glad to use your product.