What to use for VHDL/digital-logic simulation on Mac OS X

Question

I suddenly realized that there is no Altera Quartus or Xilins ISE or ModelSim on Mac OS X.

What do people use to at least simulate VHDL and schematic designs on Macs?

Answer 1

Try GHDL (alternate link: at ghdl.free.fr).

From the site:

GHDL is an open-source simulator for the VHDL language. GHDL allows you to compile and execute your VHDL code directly in your PC. Combined with a GUI-based wave viewer and a good VHDL text editor, GHDL is a very powerful tool for writing, testing and simulating your VHDL code.

GHDL is based on the very popular GNU compiler GCC and runs on Linux, Windows and Apple OS X. You can freely download a binary distribution for your OS or try to compile GHDL on your own machine.

Answer 2

I use aquamacs for design entry. For verilog I use icarus and gtkwave.

I have not tried GHDL, I have been running a headless linux server via VirtualBox and running modelsim via ssh with X11 forwarding. That also works for ISE and Quartus.

Note that for X11 forwarding on the Mac, you have to turn on trusted in your config

X11Forwarding     yes
ForwardX11Trusted yes

or on the command line

ssh -Y

Let me know how you get on.

Answer 3

What most people use is Parallels (or another virtualisation tool), so that they can use a ModelSim on Parallels, on their Mac. Some people just SSH to a company Linux server that runs the simulator.

Another interesting way to go is www.plunify.com. This is a service that runs your simulations in the cloud and emails you the results.

Finally, I hear there is a commercial VHDL simulator that runs on natively on Mac OS X: DirectVHDL. It has limitations, but it might be good enough to get started.