SoC Simulation via AXI BFMs

Hi all,

The Cyclone SoC software support seems to be settling down now (U-Boot and Linux source are being mainlined), so I feel its time to see how useful these devices are.

I prefer to simulate my custom code before testing in hardware. I do not yet have hardware. The Altera site has an example design ...

http://www.altera.com/support/examples/design-entry-tools/qsys/exm-hps-axi-bfm.html

But the Mentor BFMs only work with "Modelsim-Altera Edition" (see the Service Request response I posted in this thread)

http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46223

Has anyone used these BFMs? How about any other AXI BFMs? Eg., anyone used the Xilinx AXI BFMs with Xilinx devices? Is Xilinx's support better than Altera's?

This site has some free AXI BFM IP ... anyone used these?

http://syswip.com/

Please any feedback/comments on how people are simulating their SoC designs.

Feel free to post complaints too - hopefully we can use them to motivate Altera to provide proper simulation support for their devices!

Cheers,

Dave