Whats the best laptop which can be used for a home entertainment as well as running high level programes such as VHDL?

Answer 1

Saying you need to run "high level programes such as VHDL" is sort of misleading. VHDL is simply a programming language for designing logic. You need to run the programs that simulate and/or compile the code that you've written.

To compose the code, any text editor will do. In that sense, the slowest machine that will let you edit text will work just fine.

To simulate or synthesize the code, the more complex your design, the more processing and memory power you'll need. For that, you'll need a mid to high end desktop computer or workstation. A good example is a well configured Hewlett Packard XW class workstation.

Of course, the computer that you choose, will depend on the software that you plan to use for simulation and/or synthesis. For windows workstations, I would recommend using Symphony EDA's VHDL Simili. It's available for free from their website.

Anyway, to make a long answer short, look for a computer with specs similar to the following:

* Hardware platform: PC with Intel Pentium II equivalent or better * Video: 1280x1024 resolution or higher (lower resolutions will work but not recommended) * 10/100 Network Card * Operating System: Windows XP and/or Red Hat Linux * Memory: Minimum of 512 MB of available RAM * Disk Space: Minimum 80GB + additional space for vendor libraries.