PRO vs ONE


F6EEQ

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Hi there,

 

I'm new to FPGA with good knowlege about PICµ (OK, I know it's not the same king of logic).

 

Since some months I read a lot of stuff and downloaded some books abour FPGA, VHDL.. well all the recommended stuff :P

 

I'd like to jump in, but i'm hesitating PRO/ONE.

I could not figure if the ONE is simpler, or if there is no real difficulty to adapt ONE project to the PRO.

 

I understood that SPARTAN 6 is more powerfull than SPARTAN 3, but is it really necessary to begin... and may be to drop it after a while!

 

Price is not an issue, because difference is relatively small, and if you have to jump it seems better to go up.

 

If I refer to my experience with µ, it's more simple to program a 16F84 than a 18Fxxx, not because the soft is different, but configuration could be tricky.

After a while when you understand what you're doing, capability is way higher!

 

Do I have to expect same problems with ONE/PRO ??

 

I had a look through the forum but did not find any hint.

Thanks for any advice.

 

Gerard

 

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I would go with the Pro, the only reason to hesitate is the change to the Spartan 6 synthesis engine in Xilinx ISE webpack. They used a new synthesis engine for the Spartan 6 that is stricter in interpreting HDL. Things that used to be allowed for the Spartan 3E are no longer allowed and will generate an error. They are always minor things that can be researched and fixed. But the end result is that you might run into issues with projects that you download from the Internet needed some work on the Spartan 6. We can always help you through these issues here in the forum so I would be aware of it, but I would still recommend the Spartan 6. The Spartan 6 has more internal BRAM and it also has external SDRAM, so much more is possible.

 

Jack.

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OK,

thanks for your answers.

That's what I thought, and the increased complexity is for sure worth a try!

 

I will for sure use the forum resources to get some help!

 

See (or read you :P ) soon.

 

Gerard

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  • 1 month later...

I have both, and find myself using the original Papilio One more often simply due to the fact that there is more DIY stuff out there for the older more mature Spartan3. As Jack says, it can take some effort to port older code over to the Spartan6, although it is undeniably a faster, more capable part and going forward we'll likely see more Spartan6 stuff. Both are incredibly cool and very capable pieces of hardware though and I think you'll be happy with either one.

 

Personally I would have preferred something like an updated Papilio Plus with some onboard SRAM. The SDRAM on the Pro is spacious, but orders of magnitude more complex to work with than SRAM.

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