[sdiy] PicoBlaze versus the EDK

[Paul Schreiber]

a) The PicoBlaze for Spartan now *includes* for free BOTH Verilog and VHDL 
source. Sweet!

b) You can stick about *12* PicoBlaze cores into *1* 200K gate part. How cool is 
that? Oh, and have ~75K gates left over :)

c) The EDK is $500 a year *IF* you want to keep it current (new updates, etc). 
If you do not elect to keep it current, then your toolset simply "freezes" at 
the current revision after 1 year. Still good forever, no royalties. Verified 
this yesterday. Now, you have to ALSO "freeze" the ISE code (WebPack) at the 
SAME REVISION for the 2 to work together. Currently, 8.1 is the rev level. 
Service packs are FREE within the revision (I think ISE is on Service Pack #3, 
EDK on #1). WebPack, which is FREE, used to be called Base-X and was $800 (which 
I paid for...pffftttt).

d) If you want to see good documentation of what this board can do, go here:

http://www.xilinx.com/products/boards/s3estarter/reference_designs.htm

These are the free demos that you can run on the board. The PDF files are VERY 
NICE in explaining a "top level" overview of each demo.

No, I'm not abandoning analog :) But this is a "dream board" for digital synth 
DIY.

Paul S.