Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!Thomas
From: Thomas@cup.portal.com (Tom Newton Biggs)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Xilinx
Message-ID: <21040@cup.portal.com>
Date: 5 Aug 89 06:56:23 GMT
References: <8897@june.cs.washington.edu>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 13

I have used Xilinx parts in a couple of designs. I have used their biggest
parts, the 3090, which is supposed to be equivalent to 6000 or so gates.
The problem with this part is that to design with it you need at least
6 Meg of memory in your pc, and the pc must be a fast '386 type or it
is frustatingly slow. We also have the Mentor graphics interface, which
runs on Apollo workstations and allows Mentor CAD to be used to draw
schematics, which are then converted into a netlist, which can be made
into a prom to program the 3090. There are several problems with the
Apollo software though. First, it has LOTS of bugs. I don't think that
Xilinx programmers really understand Mentor that well. Second, it isn't
complete. The netlist still has to be downloaded into a PC to do anly
hand layout and to convert to a prom.
Another note: AMD is a second source for several of the Xilinx parts.