Linux are powerful and Open Source O.S. Most of FPGA Design Tools as VIVADO (from Xilinx) or Quartus (from Intel Altera) offers strong FPGA Design Support's. Many project which need embedded processing (Image/Video processing with Processor and FPGA) need to build at Linux Distro's. Mostly prefered Linux Distro's for FPGA Design are RedHat, Ubuntu and Centos. For more details please visit: www.digitronixnepal.com or write us at : digitronixnepali@gmail.com

1. Selecting Linux Distro’s for
FPGA Design
Presentation by
Digitronix Nepal
Web: www.digitronixnepal.com
E-Mail: digitronixnepali@gmail.com
Selecting Linux Distro’s for FPGA Design by Digitronix Nepal 1

2. Best suited Linux distro for
hardware/software development
Main Field of interest would be
- HDL (VHDL mainly)
- FPGA/CPLD (synthesis, simulation etc)
- CSystemC
- Tcl scripting
- network hardware applications development (FPGA-based network processors i.e.)
Key (or nice to have at least) system features would be:
- large, stable and willing to help community (especially the large developer part of which
would be welcomed)
- support for wide spectrum of development tools (proprietary and open source)
- bunch of docs, tutorials, guides, hints for devel's
As far as my online research went, I've manage to shorten it down to 3 favorites:
- Debian
- Fedora/CentOS
- Gentoo
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3. Debian
• Best for using s/w for other distros
• Oldest and popular linux distro
• Have large community: http://forums.fedoraforum.org
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4. Fedora
• Bleeding edge stuff
• Have large community: http://forums.debian.net
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5. Gentoo
• Takes more time to install and set up
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6. CentOS
• Highly preferred on scientific and research projects
CentOS, which is leveraged from Fedora, which, in turn, is a modified Red Hat
Mint interface is more tailored to the common user (eventually an EE) than
CentOS, but CentOS is very well regarded by system administrators running
servers, because CentOS strenght is security (so they claim...). So if the goal is
deploying servers, perhaps the choice shoud be CentOS.
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7. What are the pros and cons in using the
CentOS Linux distribution?
The pros are that it is compatible with Red Hat Enterprise so anything that works on one will work
on the other and the administration techniques are the same, and that it inherits the same long
term support with bug and security fixes backported so they don't change behavior. If you get
something working, you can expect it to keep working for many years with no more effort than an
occasional 'yum update' to the system. The cons are that like RHEL it is more server than
desktop oriented and as the system ages it does not get many new features. If you are starting
soon, it might be worth waiting for version 6.0 which isn't released yet but will be a new cycle
starting with fairly current packages.
In the way of pros, not much. It is free and it is broken
Just recently, I needed to install "Asterisk" and "Vicidial". CentOS is still on Perl 5.8 and cpan is seriously
unusable. Ended up using Debian.
RedHat is also making the use of RHEL more difficult. More to put the screws to Oracle and Novell rather
than CentOS but in the future, RHEL6, there probably will be significant delays in CentOS releases as the
reverse engineering will be a lot more complex..
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8. RedHat Entreprise Linux
• FPGA Design tools supported
SUSE Linux
• FPGA design tools supported
A note for EEs (which is the core of the question). Several tools very important for
EE are supported by the vendors only for some Linux distros. For instance, the
Xilinx tools for programming FPGAs are supported only for "Red Hat Enterprise
Linux" (RHEL) and for "SUSE Linux Enterprise" (SLES). The exact same distros
are supported by Synopsys and by Cadence, the most important and popular CAD
vendors of EE tools for IC design, simulation, verification, etc. Altera, another
important FPGA vendor, supports RHEL. Xilinx and Altera have free tools targeting
students and instructors, and sometimes these can be installed in Fedora because
this distro is a modified RHEL (consult user forums to check).
But RHEL and SLES are paid Linux distros, which have support from their
companies, and so if the goal is to install a professional workstation for electronic
circuit design (BTW, the software from the CAD companies can cost tens of
thousands of USD per year...) obviously RHEL or SLES should be the winning
choices (and beware of which versions of the OS are supported...).
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10. PetaLinux from Xilinx
The PetaLinux Tools offers everything necessary to customize, build and deploy
Embedded Linux solutions on Xilinx processing systems. Tailored to accelerate design
productivity, the solution works with the Xilinx hardware design tools to ease the
development of Linux systems for Zynq® UltraScale+™ MPSoC, Zynq®-7000 All
Programmable SoCs, and MicroBlaze™.
PetaLinux Tools (host)
PetaLinux tools eases the development of Linux-based products; all the way from
system boot to execution with the following tools:
•Command-line interfaces
•Application, Device Driver & Library generators and development templates
•Bootable system Image builder
•Debug agents
•GCC tools
•Integrated QEMU Full System Simulator
•Automated tools
•Support for Xilinx System Debugger
With these tools developers can customize the boot loader, Linux kernel, or Linux
applications. They can add new kernels, device drivers, applications, libraries, and boot
and test software stacks on the included full system simulator (QEMU) or on physical
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11. PetaLinux from Xilinx
Reference Linux Distribution
PetaLinux provides a complete, reference Linux distribution that has been
integrated and tested for Xilinx devices. The reference Linux distribution includes
both binary and source Linux packages including:
•Boot loader
•CPU-optimized kernel
•Linux applications & libraries
•C & C++ application development
•Debug
•Thread and FPU support
•Integrated web server for easy remote management of network and firmware
configurations
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