xilinx vivado and zynq

I put one of those into a design for a client towards the end of last year. Nice part for certain applications, but make sure you read the long errata list very carefully - many of the features on the SoC don't work, and have a status of "no plan to fix."

To be fair, most ARM SoCs from any manufacturer have nasty bugs that are never fixed.

Errata:

Regards, Allan

Thanks, Allan. Interesting. Would you mind saying what caused you to choose that part? What excluded other options and made this one in some fashion 'optimal?'

(I'm going to learn about vivado more than about the Zynq, this time around. But I'm curious about the choice you made and what led up to it and would gladly read anything you choose to write about that.)

Jon

event-

The basic architecture for this client's application is similar to that of a router: there is some sort of microprocessor running an operating system and "control plane" (low bandwidth but nasty protocol data) and an FPGA for the "data plane" (high bandwidth data with low latency).

Obvious choices were a Spartan 6 FPGA coupled with one of the many ARM SoCs (from e.g. TI, Marvell, etc.). All of these were cheaper than the Zynq.

The thing that swung us to using Zynq was the fact that the major device on the board came from a single manufacturer, and that manufactuer has a reputation for the longevity of supply of parts.

ARM SoCs are usually pretty bad choices if you want to make a product for more than a couple of years. Once that smartphone is replaced by a newer model, the SoC manufacturer will soon stop making the device.

Regards, Allan

That is what they are advertising it as. Given the typical reported quality of Xilinx tools i won't hold my breath.

?-)

Hey, thanks for pointing this out. I just acquired a Zedboard a while ago to experiment with, but wasn't aware of the Vivado. The webpack version covering the ZYNQ seems to be due soon.

Regards, Mikko

Yes, I think that's why they sent me notices and offered the class here, locally. The webpack version is limited, but free. But I think they've done some reasonably aggressive pricing structure for the real deal, too. I saw figures in the $2000 range, which is almost getting livable for a dba like me.

I have an old set of Xilinx tools that they put out just BEFORE they did their very first webpack, years ago. It ran solo (no net connection) and was also free. But with the webpack, they immediately stopped giving that thing away and it became instant unobtainium. (so far as I remember.)

Jon