[sdiy] Xilinx 3E board comments

[synth1 at airmail.net]

> Ok, so how much cash are we talking about to purchase _everything_
> required to start
> experimenting with making a custom synth?

$150. You can order online from www.xilinx.com

The board comes will all you need to get started. Note that the 8-bit
PicoBlaze is *free* to use, the 32-bit MicroBlaze is NOT (the EDK or
Embedded Design Kit is around $400). You do get a 30-day free trail of the
EDK to test drive. However, the 8-bit PicoBlaze is a 50Mhz CPU, not
shabby.

What is very cool is that the Xilinx design tools allow you to use
schematics (gate or "block level" as you wish) with VHDL and Verilog (in
the old days you had to pick one, which was a pain). Personally, Verilog
is 10X easier to learn than VHDL. In other words, your schematic can have,
at the same time, individual gates (inverters, NOR, etc), library parts
that are block diagrams (16-bit counters, etc), library parts that are
pre-compiled entities (PicoBlaze CPU, I2C and SPI ports, 16550 UARTS, VGA
controllers, etc) and chunks of VHDL/Verilog. For us old farts that
started by writing PALASM or ABLE on a 4.77Mhz XT, this is mind-boggling.

The tools allow you to very quickly "plop down" large functional blocks
(you can make your own as to go along). The Xilinx website is always full
of new "IP modules" to play with. There is a whole cottage industry in
selling functional blocks (8051 clones, USB cores, all sorts of things).


Paul S.