64-bit linux machine

Sorry this is a little bit OT, but would appreciate any
suggestions/recommendations on 64-bit Linux machine (processor, Linux
distribution, vendor, etc) for FPGA development.

Thanks,
Jim
Jim ( remove NOOOSPAM)
http://www.geocities.com/jimwu88/chips

Jim Wu

On Sat, 14 Aug 2004 10:43:58 +0000, Jim Wu wrote:

> Sorry this is a little bit OT, but would appreciate any
> suggestions/recommendations on 64-bit Linux machine (processor, Linux
> distribution, vendor, etc) for FPGA development.
>
> Thanks,
> Jim
> Jim ( remove NOOOSPAM)
> http://www.geocities.com/jimwu88/chips

I've just gotten a Compaq R3000z AMD64 3400+ laptop. I have Mandrake 10.0
AMD64 version on it which works fine except that it doesn't seem to be
able to control the clock speed on it, it comes up in Cool and Quiet mode
and stays there unless I boot into XP first and then do a reboot into
Linux. I'm going to try a newer kernel to see if that fixes the problem.
Opterons don't have Cool & Quiet so if you get an Opteron this won't be a
problem.

I've been doing some benchmarking doing Verilog simulations with NCsim and
Xilinx place and routes. The AMD64 is screaming fast for this kind of
work. I did simulations with recordvars on and off and a Virtex2P XC2VP20
place and route. With recordvars off the Athlon 3400+ is 1.95 times as
fast as my 2.66GHz Xeon, with recordvars on it's 1.4 times as fast (take
into account that this is a laptop with a 4400 RPM drive vs a server with
7200 RPM drives). Doing XST, ngdbuild, map, par, it is 1.77 times as fast
as the Xeon. I expect that an Opteron would be even faster, my laptop is
using the 754 pin version of the AMD64, the Opteron has twice the memory
bandwidth so it should do even better.

B. Joshua Rosen