[loginusername]

To summarize, there exists at least one person who wants to write their own tools, or at least use open source tools.

For at least this one person, downloading closed source software from the chip manufacturer is not satisfactory.

The comments also add that these downloads can be on the order of 8-20GB.

Has anyone ever wondered what is in those large binaries?

Does someone think the larger size somehow offers potentially more IP protection?

Does the FPGA utilities world have anything like teensy_loader_cli? It's about 28k. Not limited to MS Windows. Works with both BSD and Linux.

[nickpsecurity]

They're huge because they have to support a lot of stuff from hardware devices to synthesis to verification. Probably legacy issues in there too. It doesn't help that every part of hardware development is Mega-Hard:

http://fpgacomputing.blogspot.com/2008/08/megahard-corp-open...

Each aspect of synthesis, equivalence checking, testing, etc has whole MS's and PhD's dedicated to it. I'm sure the result can be a lot smaller than 20GB but it's still going to be incomprehensible by one person except in pieces. And that person has to be an expert on every aspect of hardware development from digital to analog to the wires that make up the gates. Like major OS's or software, you're always going to be taking someone else's word that a huge chunk of it's safe. Might as well plan around that.

[duskwuff]

In Xilinx's case, the toolchain is huge because it isn't just bitstream synthesis; it also includes:

* Simulation and verification tools

* Licensed IP cores for a bunch of common tasks

* Toolchains for at least three different platforms (ARM, Microblaze, PowerPC)

* 32-bit and 64-bit versions of everything

* A JRE

Bottom line is, there's legitimately a ton of stuff in there.