You can download a free 20-day evalation from Aldec's website.įor Modelsim/PE, you have to email Mentor Graphics for an evaluation license-key.
MODELSIM ALTERA VS MODELSIM ALTERA STARTER LICENSE
fewer quirks), probably because it benefits from the Mentor's commitment to Modelsim/SE, which is an (expensive) ASIC signoff-grade simulator.īeyond that, you just have to test both simulators for yourself, and see which one works better for you. Notice that ModelSim setup have the same MD5 sum in both cases, this is because it contains both: the Altera Edition and the Altera Standard Edition, you can use whatever you want, but for Altera Edition you need the proper license files. Still, Modelsim/PE's Systemverilog support ism ore "polished" (i.e. 7.3 is almost caught up with Modelsim/PE 6.3 - only critical thing missing from ActiveHDL is Systemverilog package/endpackage. 7.2 did not support enough Systemverilog to really be useful. I lean toward Systemverilog myself, so I have been watching Active-HDL since v7.2. No one has complained about any major incompatibilities between ActiveHDL's simulator-engine, and FPGA-simulation libraries. loves it.) It's faster (compared to Modelsim/PE), has a better GUI, and as of today, has comparable language support (Systemverilog/Verilog/VHDL.) Once upon a time, device-simulation libraries were very picky about the simulator - For the most part, those kinds of problems are a thing of the past. But everyone who has used ActiveHDL, raves about it (i.e. Then select the panel for EDA simulation tools. If it does not, then you probably need to set the path to ModelSim. Select Tools::Run Simulation Tool::Gate Level Simulation. This means several things:ġ) both Xilinx and Altera qualify their simulation/design-libraries for the Modelsim simulator.Ģ) Quartus-II and ISE/Webpack can generate testbench (automation) scripts compatible with Modelsim, making push-button invocation easy.Īldec's Active-HDL doesn't have this "official" level of support. Now you are ready to start the simulation process. Modelsim/PE is the officially supported simulator for Xilinx and Altera tool flows.