#6984729, By thrawn Anybody work in / know about chip design?

thrawn 15 Feb 2011 08:25:23 899 posts
Seen 3 months ago
Registered 15 years ago

Grunk wrote:

What I was oging to add was (and I think this thrawn geezer might be able to help?) is that Altera have their own toolsuite called Quartus, it has support for both VHDL and systemVerilog, I also believe they have evaluation/student versions available.

So it might be worth seeing if your nephew wants to download a copy and having a play with writing a couple of state machines, and a bus driver, nothing too taxing, but if you can do it in both languages, then you'll probably jump to the top of the graduate list.

Yes, there is a free version of the Quartus software if he wanted to have a play. I think anyone can download it from the website, although you probably have to register. Depending on the Uni he's at they may have full blown versions available too.

Also, listen to Grunk! I work on the internal software infrastructure, so only have a passing familiarity with the industry. Grunk quite clearly knows what he's talking about (Well, he uses the same words as our engineers do).