Answers Database

M1.3/M1.4 ngd2xnf does not support 4000EX/XL/XV


Record #3305

Product Family:  Software

Product Line:  Merged Core

Problem Title:
M1.3/M1.4 ngd2xnf does not support 4000EX/XL/XV


Problem Description:
keywords: ngd2xnf,4000ex,4000xl,4000xv,5200

urgency: hot

general description:

A customer gets an error message from ngd2xnf that
the architecture selected is not supported:

ngd2xnf:  version M1.4.12
Copyright (c) 1995-1997 Xilinx, Inc.  All rights reserved.
   Reading design from "user_r.nga" ...
ERROR:basnx:24 - XNF simulation output is not supported for this
xc4000xl family designs.  The output simulation netlist must be EDIF
(NGD2EDIF), VHDL(NGD2VHDL), or Verilog (NGD2VER).


Solution 1:

ngd2xnf for M1.3/M1.4 was not designed to support 'newer' Xilinx
FPGA's.  M1.3/M1.4 is developed as an EDIF/HDL based flow.  When
Xilinx introduces newer devices, the simulation flow for
new devices, like the 4000EX/XL/XV & 5200 , is based on
EDIF/HDL.

ngd2xnf only supports the following families:

XC3000A/L
XC3100A/L
XC4000E/L

No new devices will be added to ngd2xnf.  Chapter 16
of the Development System Reference Guide documents the behavior
of ngd2xnf.  All Xilinx EDA Alliance parteners were informed of the limits of ng
d2xnf.



Solution 2:

Attempting to simulate a device family that is not
supported by ngd2xnf will fail.

There is a workaround if all you want to do is verify
functionality and are not using any family specific
features.  If a design does not use a architecture
specific features of the 4000EX/XL/XV and/or 5200, just
retarget the device with ngdbuild to a
XC3000A/L, XC3100A/L, or XC4000E/L parttype, and then
run ngd2edif, ngd2ver, or ngd2vhdl.  A functional
EDIF or HDL file will be produced which can be used
for functional simulation.



Solution 3:

Note, the 4000XL\EX family was not officially supported
by ngd2xnf in M1.3.7.  If a netlist had 4000XL specific
features, and ngd2xnf v1.3.7 was run on the netlist,
the resulting netlist would be created with 4000E specific
features. The resulting netlist could have functional
and timing problems.

If you want to simulate a 4000XL/EX/XV in either M1.3
or M1.4, only ngd2edif, ngd2ver, ngd2vhdl can be used.



End of Record #3305