I've got to try a 20y old proasic3e kit and tried with the Libero 11.9SP6 (the latest downloaded from Microchip site, free silver license). I do it not because I do not love my life (or because I want to deepen my mental health disaster), but from the nostalgia as the Actel was the first fpga/cpld I ever worked with (2000 gates antifuse OTP one, in 1991 with ViewLogic). So I could not resist the temptation to try with the 1.500.000 gates one
![Grin ;D](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/grin.gif)
After several days and nights coping with IDE, programmer and the board jumpers/switches, it works now, and I can build and blink the leds..
![Cheesy :D](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/cheesy.gif)
The Libero is quite sensitive on the sequence of operations you do, I often get the ".lok" file where I have to delete it in order to proceed at certain step further on. Also FlashPro programmer works here in stand alone mode only.
The issue I had was with the fpga's pins assignment, as sometimes it somehow changes the assignment to a random one and the fpga did not work as expected of course (there is none "Save" in pin planner window). So it seems to me the order of saving the data in various opened windows of the IDE sometimes creates a mess, but when you get the feeling how to do it it works reliably.
Otherwise I cannot say it is not useful or a crap, of course it has its quirks. The smartdesigner gui works as well, and it is comparable with quartus or ise14.7 I've been using from time to time.
The major disappointment here is with my fpga chip - it has an onchip flash for the setup, but the internal sram (or at least a part of it) cannot be init off the internal flash, as there is none internal flash for the sram init at all (there is a 1024bit user flash only)..
This problem might not exist with the polarfire/smartfusion/igloo2 devices, however.
Now, I've been trying with its CoreABC ucontroller (luckily it uses the versatiles for its rom emulation) and CoreSPI IP blocks to learn how to read an external spi flash and feed the data into the internal sram such I can use the sram somehow.
If any experience with it I would be happy if you may share (a different thread perhaps)..