Xilinx Spartan 3 Vs Lattice EC(P) device and tools

[eznode]

xilinx vs lattice

Is there anyone that has been using the Lattice EC, ECP device and tools
how does it compare with Xilinx Spartan 3 device and tools?

 

[lucbra]

lattice vs spartan

I assume the Xilinx tools will be marginally better, but that doesn't mean the Lattice tools are bad. They use Leonardo (migrating to PrecisionRTL) and Synplicity for synthesis, and Modelsim for simulation. At the back and the floorplanner and P&R is probably similar as Xilinx's.
With regards to the hardware, I assume it is debatable wether EC/ECP is better or not. In some applications the S3 will be a better choise, in others EC/ECP will be.
One thing I know (and I have worked with ECP), the performance of the DSP block is by far supperior to the multiplier in S3. The DSP-block is full featured (input reg, mult, pipeline reg, adder/Accumulator, output reg) and has more options (9x9, 18x18, 36x36).
The logic itself is quite comparable with S3 (+250MHz).
The I/O block has less support for different I/O standards, but has built in support for fast DDR memory (DDR400), and this is not achievable with S3.
On top of this the device can be configured through a very cheap and small (SOIC8) SPI serial flash memory. You can access this SPI memory for write actions as well.
So I assume the device family is well worth the investigation. I'm pro but I have used quite a lot of Lattice devices in the past and much less Xilinx (because of the nature of the products I was developping, mostly CPLD apps).