January 15, 2021

Xilinx Zynq - XC7Z010 - learning about FPGAs

This is quite a topic and there is a lot to learn. What follows is a multitude of links to online resources. I am just gathering them at this point, but may prune these back to the best and most useful as I gain experience.

Excellent video

I started this, then got distracted. It looks excellent:

Numato tutorial

This is particularly good and I have a page discussing it:

Hello World on the EBAZ4205

  • Hello World on the EBAZ4205

    Videos by Dom

    Given the GUI nature of Vivado and the need to interact with it in fussy ways (like hovering over some spot and waiting for a transformation on the GUI to happen), videos are ideal. This fellow does a nice job, and perhaps most important of all speaks slowly and clearly. This video exposed the mystery of how to allow the PL and PS to talk to each other. In particular (though it seems obvious now) the Zynq "processing system" block is the PS.

    Use Vitis rather than Vivado?

    Someone described this to me as being able to write actualy C code and get it translated to some logic for the FPGA. This sounds even higher level that RTL languages like Verilog and not the direction I want to head in, but you never know.

    Generic FPGA Tutorials

    These look good: I had great hopes for the following "FPGA bootcamp", but it is basically just crap. Badly organized, and as near as I can tell incomplete. Maybe trying to shoehorn it into the Hackaday.IO framework just didn't work, but the above guides seem to manage nicely.

    FPGA details

    It is surprisingly hard to find details about what is in the FPGA. One of the best things I have found so far is UG574 from Xilinx.

    The Zynq is not an Artix, but they are brothers, and the datasheet at least talks about CLB, Slices, and LUTs.

    Vivado

    This is the software tool provided by Xilinx.

    MyiR

    Someone else making Zynq based boards. The Z-turn board has a $99 price tag, has 1G of ram, a 16M flash, 1G ethernet.

    Digilent

    Digilent sells products with Zynq chips on them, such as their Zybo. This next item sells for $150. It is an Artix-7 not a Zynq however. But at that price it is a decent candidate for learning Vivado and FPGA.

    Tiny FPGA

    Here you go for $12. I uses a Lattice MachX02-256. Out of Stock in early 2021

    Aldec

    Aldec has interesting articles on their blog and website. The website requires registration and approval, which I am still waiting on. A week later and I am still waiting, so who knows, this is a dead end apparently.

    They make board level products, and some (all?) of their TySOM boards seem to use Zynq processors.

    Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

    Tom's Computer Info / tom@mmto.org