Is DSP Builder intended to be used in design a product?

[Altera_Forum]

Hello, my name is Jaime 

I am envolved in a development of physical layer blocks of a digital TV system. At present I am coding in VHDL but I evaluating to use DSP Builder to reduce development time. How good is to use DSP Builder in industry? or is better to continue using VHDL?

[Altera_Forum]

Hello , 

  I believe the dsp builder is integrated into matlab which allows you to generate Hdl code for quick designs. From experience, it's an ok tool for testing . Designing in hdl will allow you to make a more optimized design and better understand the dsp concepts. I think you should explore the mega wizards further before trying the dsp builder. Btw hdl coder is available for matlab which have better performing dsp cores if interested.

[Altera_Forum]

From experience of HDL coder (a few years ago), these tools are fine if all you are doing is mathmatics and happy to use the existing IP. If you want to do any control logic, you're better off in VHDL world.  

I dont know anyone using DSP builder or HDL coder seriously for FPGA designs in industry. Even if you are using them, you will need to know VHDL to hand code blocks to do interfacing of things that dont easily connect to DSP Builder/HDL coder anyway.  But these tools seem to have been a bit of a FAD. There was a lot of noise about them 5 years ago, but that seems to have died down now in favor of the SoCs as well as OpenCL and C-gates compilation.

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---   I dont know anyone using DSP builder or HDL coder seriously for FPGA designs in industry. Even if you are using them, you will need to know VHDL to hand code blocks to do interfacing of things that dont easily connect to DSP Builder/HDL coder anyway.   --- Quote End ---    We have been using dsp builder extensively for the last 5 years and it is great tool. entire chains of dsp are done in few days including control and glue logic. It is excellent for speed and resource as well. But requires lot of testing knowledge. The only area when it is not used is project level integration and some cases of dsp modules that are not yet supported e.g. a lut based filter rather than regular filter or an nco dedicated to specific sampling rate.

[Altera_Forum]

So for larger designs, it's still not a viable full system solution? (obviously depending on interfaces etc). 

 What I did like about HDL coder back then was the integrated testing it offered. We had the system all architected in matlab/simulink, so I could swap out blocks for HDL coded ones and even hand code via the Modelsim Co-simulation block, and it allowed a nice closed loop test with system blocks and VHDL.