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Xilinx Vivado

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Tim Ansell edited this page Aug 17, 2018 · 17 revisions

For Series 7 FPGAs from Xilinx we currently use the Xilinx Vivado Design Suite.

Vivado is free as in beer but not free as in freedom, this is the only non-FOSS tool used.

We are using "Vivado Design Suite - HLx Editions" and the 2017.3 release (Other 2017/2018 releases may work, but it is not guaranteed). You will also need the free WebPack license.




Download & Install Vivado

The Xilinx Vivado toolchain is 16GB and may take many hours to download.




Downloading Vivado

Go to https://www.xilinx.com/support/download.html - click download.

You will be required to create a free account and log in.

Option 1 - Offline install

16GiB download -- do this if you already have a local copy of the file already.

The offline install is called "All OS installer Single-File Download".

From the download page click through to download the Xilinx_Vivado_SDK_2017.3_1005_1.tar.gz file (A link is provided below but Xilinx regularly breaks it).

currently it is 2 files:

Once downloaded, untar the file and follow the "Installing Vivado" instructions, below.

Option 2 - Linux-only install

100MiB initial download, allows you to select specific features -- do this if you're downloading from scratch.

The online install is called "Linux self-extracting Web Installer". From the download page click through to download the Xilinx_Vivado_SDK_2017.3_1005_1_Lin64.tar.gz file (A link is provided below but Xilinx regularly breaks it).

Unpack this to get a shell script -- Xilinx_Vivado_SDK_2017.3_1005_1_Lin64.bin, run chmod +x the .bin file and follow the "Installing Vivado" instructions.




Installing Vivado

Vivado can be installed to any path that has enough free space.

We recommend not installing as root, to do this you can either;

  • (Preferred) Create /opt/Xilinx and make it owned by your user via; 
    sudo mkdir /opt/Xilinx
sudo chown $USER:$USER /opt/Xilinx

or

  • (Advanced users only) Use another path owned by you and set the XILINX_PATH environment variable.

To actually install;

  • If you went with Option 1 - Install via running xsetup from the extracted tarball
  • If you went with Option 2 - Install via running running the .bin file you downloaded

Select "Vivado HL WebPack" (the free version)

We only need the minimal features -- untick all but the following:

  • Design Tools / Vivado Design Suite / Vivado
  • Devices / Production Devices / 7 Series /




Setting up a license

You will need to create a Xilinx account in order to obtain a license, after you’ve created an account, navigate to the following link: https://www.xilinx.com/member/forms/license-form.html

You will need to generate the license of type: Vivado Design Suite: HL WebPACK 2015 and Earlier License. If you have previously generated a license you should be able to find it somewhere on this page too.

This license will be emailed to you, copy the file to ~/.Xilinx/Xilinx.lic.




Ensure the License Works -- Using Vivado GUI

There should now be an icon for Vivado on your desktop. Regardless, you should ensure that the Vivado GUI runs.

Depending on how you installed it, you can also run it from the command line:

source /opt/Xilinx/Vivado/2017.3/settings64.sh
vivado

Check you have a valid license: Help -> Manage License

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