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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: freqmax on May 14, 2011, 01:12:15 PM
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For those of us that does FPGA development. Any recommendations by experience on what kind of PC machines that execute the synthesis software fast?
My own experience is that L1-3 cache is higly critical, and fast memory bus with fast modules secondarily. I suspect DD3 might have a detrimental latency however as opposed to DDR2. Clock frequency seems less critical.
This has resulted in Intel CPUs come out favorable, and is also the reason why many AMD CPUs are a factor 2/3 as fast.
So any recommendation on hardware characteristics too look for?
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RAM, RAM and oooh... more RAM.
Best to run a 64-bit OS and install at least 8GB for large designs.
As for the CPU, the biggest one you can afford (in terms of cache size). Almost any Sandy Bridge CPU will be good. We tend to buy Xeons at work for synthesis.
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Hi Freqmax,
As Alexh said, schmidtloads of RAM is good.
You didn't mention what manufacturer's chips you were planning to target?
As an example, this page on Altera's site :
http://www.altera.com/literature/rn/rn_qts_dev_support.pdf
Will give you an idea how much RAM is recommended to target particular chips.
Presumably, Xilinx would have some similar guideline for their chips.
Good luck with it!
Red