Given the highly proprietary nature of the Xilinx hardware product lines, it is rarely possible to use open source alternatives to tooling provided directly from Xilinx, although as of 2020, some exploratory attempts are being made.

As commonly practiced in the commercial electronic design automation sector, Xilinx ISE is tightly-coupled to the architecture of Xilinx's own chips (the internals of which are highly proprietary) and cannot be used with FPGA products from other vendors. The Xilinx ISE is primarily used for circuit synthesis and design, while ISIM or the ModelSim logic simulator is used for system-level testing.

Other components shipped with the Xilinx ISE include the Embedded Development Kit (EDK), a Software Development Kit (SDK) and ChipScope Pro. ISE enables the developer to synthesize ('compile') their designs, perform timing analysis, examine RTL diagrams, simulate a design's reaction to different stimuli, and configure the target device with the programmer. Use of the last released edition from October 2013 continues for in-system programming of legacy hardware designs containing older FPGAs and CPLDs otherwise orphaned by the replacement design tool, Vivado Design Suite.

Xilinx ISE (Integrated Synthesis Environment) is a discontinued software tool from Xilinx for synthesis and analysis of HDL designs, which primarily targets development of embedded firmware for Xilinx FPGA and CPLD integrated circuit (IC) product families.

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