Software Requirements for the Courses

Hardware designs for Real Digital boards can be created using AMD’s Vivado design tools with Verilog, VHDL, or HLS. Software designs that target the ARM processor cores in Zynq devices, MicroBlaze V soft processors implemented in FPGAs, or the ARM processors in MPSoC devices can be created using Vitis.

Vivado and Vitis are complete integrated development environments that provide the tools needed to create, analyze, synthesize, compile, download, and debug designs. The Real Digital courses use Vivado for Digital Logic, Vitis for Microprocessors, and both tools for Digital Systems.

Vivado and Vitis are available as free downloads through the AMD/Xilinx download site: http://www.xilinx.com/downloads. You must create an AMD/Xilinx account before you can download the software.

On the downloads page, locate the latest version of the Self Extracting Web Installer for Windows or Linux. The AMD development tools are not available for macOS.

Download and run the installer. You will be asked to sign in using your AMD/Xilinx account, and then you can select the tools and device support you want to install.

In the first selection window, choose Vitis, and hit Next. Installing Vitis will also install the Vivado tools required for FPGA development.

Under the Devices section of the installer, select “SoCs” and “Zynq-7000” and hit Next.

Choose the directory where you want the software installed and begin the installation. The download and installation can take considerable time, depending on your Internet connection and computer.

Installing the Vivado License

After the software has been installed, you must obtain and install a free AMD license before running Vivado. The Vivado License Manager is installed along with the development tools. In the Windows Start menu, search for Manage License and run the License Manager. Select Obtain License, choose “Get My Full or Purchased Certificate-Based License” and then click Connect Now.

In the browser window that opens, select “Vivado Basic Tier License, Node Locked License” and click “Generate Node-Locked License”.

The “Product Licensing” window will appear. The license must be associated with your computer using a Host ID. The Host ID can be based on your computer’s MAC address or hard-drive serial number. Using the MAC address is generally the easiest method. Select Add a Host, choose your operating system, and select the appropriate Host ID type.

To find your computer’s MAC address, type “CMD” in the Windows Start search box to open Command Prompt widow, and type “ipconfig /all” in the Command prompt. Locate the network adapter you want to use and find its Physical Address. This is the MAC address. Enter this address as the Host ID in the AMD licensing system, then click Add and then Next. AMD will generate the license file and send it to the email address associated with your AMD/Xilinx account.

After you receive the license file, return to the Vivado License Manager. Select Load License, then select Copy License and locate the license file you received from AMD. The License Manager will copy the file to the appropriate directory on your computer. After the license has been installed, Vivado should be ready to use.

Linux

If you have a desktop environment that supports desktop shortcuts the installer will try to add shortcuts for you, and these will launch the tools. Otherwise, you can start Vivado via shell commands.

The default Xilinx/linux install directory is /opt/Xilinx/, and directories for the Vivado and/or Vitis tools are located in that directory. The Vivado and Vitis directories contain folders for each release, so the default path for a specific version of a tool should be /opt/Xilinx/toolname/realeaseversion.

To run Vivado or Vitis, first source the settings file from the path for the correct tool, then run the tool’s command. For example, Vivado 2020.2 can be started from a shell with the following commands. The syntax will be the same for any other version of Vivado, but the path will be different based on the release.

$ source /opt/Xilinx/Vivado/2020.2/settings64.sh
$ vivado &

Linux Cable drivers

If you’re running linux you may need to install Xilinx’s cable drivers to communicate with the blackboard. Xilinx includes the necessary files and scripts but does not install them on some systems. To install the cable drivers you will need root access (if you aren’t the system administrator you will need to ask your admin for help).

Steps to install the Linux cable drivers

After you’ve installed Xilinx tools follow these steps to install the correct driver (note that since you may only have Vivado or Vitis installed, replace (toolname) below with Vivado or Vitis respectivly and replace (version) with the version you have installed.)

1. Navigate to /opt/Xilinx/(toolname)/(version)/data/xicom/cable_drivers/lin64/install_script/install_drivers/ .
2. Gain root access (through su, or use sudo in front of the command in the following step).
3. In the directory run the install_drivers script.

Example

To install the Drivers included with Vivado 2020.42, installed to the default path, you can run the following commands if you have sudo privilege:

$ cd /opt/Xilinx/Vivado/2020.2/data/xicom/cable_drivers/lin64/install_script
$ sudo ./install_drivers