| ??? 08/08/09 17:08 Read: times |
#168262 - So ... Why do you do all that? Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Andy Peters said:
Richard Erlacher said:
Andy Peters said: But where's the advantage in the "modern" OS? It lets you open several tasks, none of which have to be open concurrently ... That's serious bullshit, Richard. I usually have the Xilinx ISE tools, ModelSim, a bunch of emacs windows with source code and generally a handful of PDF data sheets and user guides all open concurrently. And sometimes I even open Altium 6 to see my schematic and PCB layout. See, if you do real FPGA work, this is not a luxury -- it's a requirement. (I've also got two monitors connected to the machine.) Well, those aren't necessary ... at least not concurrently ... You may find 'em convenient, but they aren't necessary. I'd be interested to know why you'd want to have source code open in a context where you're running ISE. I think much of that is just to impress yourself. I have those tools too, but I don't need them all running at once ... Why do you? but it uses 10x the processing bandwidth and 10x the memory, and cost, and ... Well, I've got 20x the tools RUNNING so it requires more memory and more processor speed. But guess what? This here 3 GHz Core2Duo Dell w/4 GB DDR2 SDRAM and a fast graphics card and huge hard disk and DVD burner and gigabit networking cost about HALF of what I paid for my 486DX2-66! Why? and in the end, it is so much slower, NO IT IS NOT. I remember the bad old days of running Xilinx XACT on a $3000 486 and literally letting the tools run OVERNIGHT to place and route a small FPGA. Now my $1000 PC takes about five minutes to synthesize and fit a Virtex4 design including the PowerPC core and a ton of logic. Gee ... you must have lots of money! Back when I was running a 'DX2 with 16MB of RAM, and a pretty large drive, I had only paid $420 or so for mine, in order to run the old XACT software with that stupid SILOS simulator. Seriously -- get your head out of your ass.
even running only one task, you finally decide to go back to DOS-before-Windows. The old OrCAD386+ stuff works 100x as fast as the Windows version, allows you to redo a task that took a team of three weeks, by yourself, in under half a day. So why is this Windows' fault that the OrCAD programmers made their stuff run slower? And what exactly is slower? redraws? Or simply because you don't like the menus and mouse and you're too lazy to remember keyboard shortcuts? I've had DOS running for months at a time without a crash. Try that with Windows! Not only am I trying, I am doing. Same for my Macs at home. Oh yes ... Mac's ... that explains the high cost ... The old, admittedly MUCH simpler PLD software that AMD gave away for free would do the job 100% in just a minute or two, while today's $50k tools take much, MUCH longer.
What $50k tools are you talking about? Xilinx WebPack is free and does everything we want except for the EDK. Are you seriously comparing a 16R8 PAL design with a Virtex4 FPGA design? If so, your whole argument is hyperbole and baseless and rather silly. Mentor, Altium, OrCAD, and Cadence tools live here. Mentor's tools aren't so cheap, nor are the others, yet the old DOS OrCAD is much more productive. The fancy High-Cost tools do some PCB things a bit better, but I'm not sure the cost is warranted. I paid for that old DOS-OrCAD stuff, too, BTW, since I got it when it was newly on the market. Folks can get it for no cost nowadays. Sure, there's more to do, but you get the picture. Wait -- you just dismissed my argument with a wave of your hand. Yes, I do a LOT more, but I need to do a lot more. Maybe your world is simple and a command-line assembler is sufficient. But that's not my world, and I suspect that's not the world most professional engineers (not licensed "Professional Engineers") live in. -a Since the PC's I use are cheap, I don't mind dedicating one for this and one for that. After all, the three in my lab cost less than $1k altogether, despite their considerable storage and maxed-out RAM. That way I don't have the problems introduced by the "modern OS" and yet still run multiple tasks using multiple monitors when I have to. That doesn't happen often, and, BTW, I don't use EMACS in several instances just to make my screen look busy. RE |
