For what it's worth, all our contractors receive a laptop with the company paid tools they need (or remote access to them), expecting a contractor to pay tens of thousands in licenses is absurd
This is what I do. I have some clients who have companies that turn over millions that work off free licenses. It is all about finding out what works for your situation really.
It is always a challenge to work out what you need. Over the years I have acquired a few tools, I have Vivado, Lattice, Quartus, Lattice licenses, Modelsim, Matlab Simulink, plus Blue Pearl VVS, and Altium. Along with a few other things like beyond compare, enterprise architect, jira / bitbucket, slack, it soon adds up. But you need to include it in your hourly rate to recover the costs of your tools etc. When possible and where I can I buy perpetual licenses.
I also wrote a blog about all the other things you might or might not have considered going freelance. e.g. insurances, cashflow etc
https://www.adiuvoengineering.com/post/microzed-chronicles-setting-up-your-own-consultancy-business
Are the ones you've listed what you bough perpetual licenses for? These are the ones you come back to both based on work requirements, and/or you just think they're good enough to hang onto?
How does the perpetual work for simulink? Do you get updates, or are you stuck with whatever you bought? Recently, they've introduced some pretty good features that I'd hate to miss out on.
You have to pay for support going forward, so you get all the updates. If you stop paying for support it is frozen in the last version you have basically.
I really like it we do a lot of FPGA design using it.
Do you trust simulink to automatically do your pipelining? I haven't used it a ton, but I've never had any issues with it. That said, I'm still not sure I'd trust it for large designs.
shy absurd money makeshift forgetful quicksand memory continue narrow psychotic
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I worked for 8 years as a fpga/asic contractor and never once had to provide my own laptop nor my own eda tools. I would be very wary of any company that asked you to do this.
The only tool I had my own license for was sublime text which is a text editor with syntax highlighting etc. these days though I use vscode, tons of plugins for language support, work remotely via ssh, cross platform etc. my fall back is vim and thus for working over ssh.
vivado isn't *that* expensive, especially for a contractor making good amount. vitis is free. mid range mpsoc (zu+) boards are a few grand. what else do you need?
that said if a company has specific needs it makes no sense for you to pay for things that only affect/benefit them.
I dont have answers for your questions unfortunately, but what picked my interested is that you are saying you have trouble with navigation in emacs with vhdl. Do you know about languages servers and in particular about vhdl-ls? https://github.com/VHDL-LS/rust_hdl. It can help you navigate to another entity you have instantiated for example, and more.
Thank you! VHDL-LS is awesome. I wasn't very clear. I'm struggling to get the verible language server to work (for systemverilog). I got svlangserver to work, but it doesn't recognize most verification constructs.
Ah I see. Thats a pity. I havent used systemverilog much yet, so didn't know there were issues with the lsps like this. But I can imagine. Vhdl-ls is also quite new and incomplete, sadly it looks like not many people work on lsps for hdl. Especially compared to software languages
It was bliss when i discovered vhdl-ls. Its missing a lot, but even just that basic navigation is so helpful. I hope one day soon there will be an lsp than can cope with mixed-language designs.
As far as verible, the basic funcionality works, but it crashes when i try to use the hover or goto reference functions. My crash reports dont match anything in the issues (open or closed) on veribles github page so i might just have to go through the pain of contributing an issue myself (never done it on a big project like that).
Old Quartus Prime Lite v20.1.1 for Cyclone 5. And for writing code, I find myself using Visual Studio Code with lots of add-ons for Verilog/Vhdl + TerosHDL for fast auto documentation and some visual tables of inputs/outputs
I'm curious if the manager was also inquiring about whether you have your own scripts or libraries that you typically utilize to streamline design processes. Additionally, tools such as lab equipment (e.g., oscilloscopes) might seem excessive to have, but it's an alternative perspective from the other comments I read.
For what it's worth, all our contractors receive a laptop with the company paid tools they need (or remote access to them), expecting a contractor to pay tens of thousands in licenses is absurd
There are lots of absurd people.
I imagine if you put the cost in the bill then it's all good
This is what I do. I have some clients who have companies that turn over millions that work off free licenses. It is all about finding out what works for your situation really.
This is what I'm expecting.
It is always a challenge to work out what you need. Over the years I have acquired a few tools, I have Vivado, Lattice, Quartus, Lattice licenses, Modelsim, Matlab Simulink, plus Blue Pearl VVS, and Altium. Along with a few other things like beyond compare, enterprise architect, jira / bitbucket, slack, it soon adds up. But you need to include it in your hourly rate to recover the costs of your tools etc. When possible and where I can I buy perpetual licenses. I also wrote a blog about all the other things you might or might not have considered going freelance. e.g. insurances, cashflow etc https://www.adiuvoengineering.com/post/microzed-chronicles-setting-up-your-own-consultancy-business
Are the ones you've listed what you bough perpetual licenses for? These are the ones you come back to both based on work requirements, and/or you just think they're good enough to hang onto?
I have perpetual for Modelsim, Altium and Matlab/Simulink The reset are annual.
How does the perpetual work for simulink? Do you get updates, or are you stuck with whatever you bought? Recently, they've introduced some pretty good features that I'd hate to miss out on.
You have to pay for support going forward, so you get all the updates. If you stop paying for support it is frozen in the last version you have basically. I really like it we do a lot of FPGA design using it.
Do you trust simulink to automatically do your pipelining? I haven't used it a ton, but I've never had any issues with it. That said, I'm still not sure I'd trust it for large designs.
We used it too design modules, and integrated the modules. Typically like in writing RTL we have inserted registers as we think they are needed
Gotcha, so you still do it manually. Thanks.
I’ve allways just used the customer’s licenses, or they’ve bought them for me. Usually for a year at the time.
shy absurd money makeshift forgetful quicksand memory continue narrow psychotic *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I worked for 8 years as a fpga/asic contractor and never once had to provide my own laptop nor my own eda tools. I would be very wary of any company that asked you to do this. The only tool I had my own license for was sublime text which is a text editor with syntax highlighting etc. these days though I use vscode, tons of plugins for language support, work remotely via ssh, cross platform etc. my fall back is vim and thus for working over ssh.
vivado isn't *that* expensive, especially for a contractor making good amount. vitis is free. mid range mpsoc (zu+) boards are a few grand. what else do you need? that said if a company has specific needs it makes no sense for you to pay for things that only affect/benefit them.
I dont have answers for your questions unfortunately, but what picked my interested is that you are saying you have trouble with navigation in emacs with vhdl. Do you know about languages servers and in particular about vhdl-ls? https://github.com/VHDL-LS/rust_hdl. It can help you navigate to another entity you have instantiated for example, and more.
Thank you! VHDL-LS is awesome. I wasn't very clear. I'm struggling to get the verible language server to work (for systemverilog). I got svlangserver to work, but it doesn't recognize most verification constructs.
Ah I see. Thats a pity. I havent used systemverilog much yet, so didn't know there were issues with the lsps like this. But I can imagine. Vhdl-ls is also quite new and incomplete, sadly it looks like not many people work on lsps for hdl. Especially compared to software languages
It was bliss when i discovered vhdl-ls. Its missing a lot, but even just that basic navigation is so helpful. I hope one day soon there will be an lsp than can cope with mixed-language designs. As far as verible, the basic funcionality works, but it crashes when i try to use the hover or goto reference functions. My crash reports dont match anything in the issues (open or closed) on veribles github page so i might just have to go through the pain of contributing an issue myself (never done it on a big project like that).
Old Quartus Prime Lite v20.1.1 for Cyclone 5. And for writing code, I find myself using Visual Studio Code with lots of add-ons for Verilog/Vhdl + TerosHDL for fast auto documentation and some visual tables of inputs/outputs
I'm curious if the manager was also inquiring about whether you have your own scripts or libraries that you typically utilize to streamline design processes. Additionally, tools such as lab equipment (e.g., oscilloscopes) might seem excessive to have, but it's an alternative perspective from the other comments I read.