Honored ContributorHello, I was reading another forum post where someone stated that Xilinx SoC development tools where light-years ahead of Altera and I wanted to post such a question. Are Xilinx Soc development tools easier to use than Altera?
Thanks, Joe
Honored ContributorTo develop hw you will need Quartus II software where inside it there is QSYS tool to integrate the HPS(ARM + peripherals) with FPGA. For sw development, you just need to use DS-5 Altera Edition which is pretty much similar with existing ARM DS-5 EDS. There is community page driven by Altera engineers to support you developing the Linux related part as well, link: www.rocketboards.org
To compare the easy-to-use level, as a beginner, I think the tools are user friendly for a simple SoC designs. You can build a working SoC system with blinking LED in less than hour. I don't know about more complicated designs, as both X and A always have their own issues with high performance products. Hope this helps..Honored ContributorThe impression I get is "Yes", but this is mostly just the way the market has gone.
Xilinx have run away with the SoC market. Altera were very very late to the party on arm, and Xilinx have had hard CPU cores on their fabric for a long time, far longer than Altera (Power PCs before ARM). I dont think Altera really have any interest in it any more, especially as they've been bought by Intel. Altera are more focuessed on getting Intel chips with FPGAs built into the fabric, rather than FPGAs with hard CPUs.
