What are HDL simulators?

Question

Software and Internet Services

I am studying FPGAs, for this I use software from Quartus II. A little familiar with ModelSim. Could you tell me what development tools are used in production in real projects in order to look and start studying them?

Answer 1

Are we talking about simulators?
ModelSim (Mentor) - the most affordable, especially given the availability of a free version, there is a more advanced version of QuestaSim. At first, getting to know him will be quite enough, in my opinion.
Someone likes ActiveHDL/Riviera (Aldec).
From more or less relevant still Incisive (Cadence) and VCS (Synopsis).
Well, do not forget the built-in simulators in Quartus (Alteraa) and ISE (Xilinx)
In general: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HDL_simulators

Answer 2

Altera does not have a built-in simulator since Quartus version 10.0 and it was very simple, test actions were set only graphically.
Xilinx ISim, almost does not support anything from SystemVerilog, while it does not talk about errors, but does not correctly simulate.
QuestaSim and ModelSim do not differ in any way from the graphical interface, they differ only in the simulator engine. In general QuestaSim has better OOP support in SystemVerilog, what works in QuestaSim may not work in ModelSim. In the free version, in addition to the speed of work (only one processor core), something may also not work, unlike the paid version (I once tried to simulate a small project, but I had to look for a cure).
Simulation tools are purchased in addition to the IDE and cost no less. So, if you shake the employer to buy, then you have to buy everything, otherwise there is no point in buying.