[scottchin]

First, just wanted to say that I find this topic really interesting. I'm trying to understand who the target user is for open-source FPGA tools.

For many hardware companies, the risk of using an unproven tool is too severe. Unlike software, you can't just push out a patch if there is a bug. I mean, in theory, I guess you can since FPGAs are reconfigurable, but it is probably not very straightforward from a deployment point of view (I actually don't know so feel free to correct me).

So, since you cannot push out fixes easily, it's quite scary for the engineering teams to work with unproven tools. For the consumer electronic space, product life-cycles are quite short (mobile phones get updated every year!). So you definitely don't want to risk cutting into your product's time-to-market due to bugs in the FPGA tools.

Also, the bigger the company, the more likely that they will have high-priority direct-support from the FPGA Vendors. Whereas, it's probably harder to get support for open-source tools. So I can't see consumer electronic companies choosing open-source tools.

So again, I'm not against this work at all! Just trying to understand the target audience.

[TD-Linux]

>(I actually don't know so feel free to correct me).

Okay, I will :) Many FPGAs load their program from a SPI chip on board, which can't be reprogrammed. However, it's increasingly common for another microcontroller or SoC to be on the same board. In this case, it's cheaper and more convenient to store the FPGA bitstream on that controller's flash and send it over SPI to the FPGA on powerup, which makes upgrades much easier, too.

On the Xilinx Zynq, a FPGA containing two Cortex-A9 cores running Linux, you can simply cat your bitstream to a character device to reconfigure the FPGA.

[diamondman]

OP here

I get there is a big difference between hardware and software, but I feel that certain parts of the gaps are closing. They will not CLOSE, but as they get closer we can learn from each other.

With that said, to address your point: Linux is one of the most dominant systems for servers. Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc use it for almost all of their backend systems. They use it not just because it is free but because it is proven and scalable. Open source databases and web servers also enjoy considerable (sometimes dominant) share. There are companies that provide support contracts for Linux (Suse, Redhat) and that model has worked to fund other open software.

So I think that establishes that a company will use open software.

As for being scary, you are correct that is a primary decision making motivation. It is why many professionals in tons of industries still run windows XP. Often they NEED XP because the software they rely on is so dependent on that specific ecosystem that huge rewrites are necessary in order for it to work on anything else, and this work (even if done by the original distributor) will take years for the tools to be stable again. This is not good engineering on the part of the tool designers. The crippling fear of NEVER TOUCHING ANYTHING is something that the open software alternatives seem to be alleviating in corporate environments since the late 90s.

The lifecycles of putting a phone together is much faster than Intel designing a processor, or Xilinx designing a new FPGA. building boards in phones and laptops is a complex game of Lego and placing them around so the timing diagrams work in all expected use cases. And if the timing does not work in some cases, whatever, people get a phone a year. Hell on my Galaxy S3 Verizon said 'oh yeah that is a known issue where sometimes the GPS just does not work because of loose wires, that was fixed in the S4, I think, which is only $$$.'

You are also correct about direct support from the company. In face make Xilinx enough money and they will share their secrets with you. But I am more targeting small to medium development. If open tools become popular and stable enough to get market share in hobbyist up to medium sized companies, it will only be so many years before bigger companies hire new engineers who grew up using open tools and have no patience for tools that have to be emulated in windows XP and have 35 nested sub menus for enabling a feature.

I do not feel attacked at all. You brought up interesting points. I hope i did them justice and did not ramble since there were a lot of points to hit.