New Genesys products

[zygot]

Obviously the sales staff is pumped to push the new Genesys ZU products. I've gotten two emails proclaiming availability, one before your web master could catch up, This isn't necessarily bad except for potential customers.

There are two versions of the board with different capabilities. It is necessary for most of your customers to know what the price and availability are for both versions before considering a purchase.

There's no mention as far as I can see about the availability or price for the usual node-locked license needed to actually use these boards

There only one schematic available and it's for the 3EG version; though there's so much read it's hard to know what exactly it represents.

Please get the horses bridled and saddled before letting them run wild.

[toshas]

On ‎1‎/‎2‎/‎2020 at 8:59 PM, zygot said:

There are two versions of the board with different capabilities. It is necessary for most of your customers to know what the price and availability are for both versions before considering a purchase.

Zynq Ultrascale+ devices up to XCZU7EV are included into Vivado WebPACK Tool.

page 9 of https://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/sw_manuals/xilinx2019_2/ug973-vivado-release-notes-install-license.pdf

In this case no special license is required, WebPACK Tool is free.

[zygot]

1 hour ago, toshas said:

In this case no special license is required, WebPACK Tool is free.

Thanks. Have you confirmed this? I have  a ZU3EG and ZU7EV board, both came with node locked device certificate licenses which I redeemed. The license for the ZU7EV has already expired for Vivado 2019.2 ( according to Lincense Manager in that version). That version of Vivado uses Vitas instead of the SDK. My Vivado 2019.1 Design Edition installation shows all of the older ZYNQ devices as supported plus a license for the 3EG, 3EG-bitgen, 7EV, and 7EV-bitgen tools.

It's really not clear to me what exactly is supported. Vitas documentation is really confusing as to what exactly is supported. I don't have a good 'golden' HW/SW project to try out for the 7EV based board to see if I can actually configure ad run a complete design.

Prior to Vivado 2019.2 Petalinux development required a Linux host. Since Vitas replaces all former software tools one would imagine that you can now develop with Petalinux on Windows; but if I haven't been able to find any specific tutorials or documentation on the specifics yet.

[toshas]

I'm pretty sure about it. But right now I'm unable to test it again.

XCZU4/5/7 were moved to WebPACK since 2017.4

[zygot]

It just seems unlikely that the free tools would support devices that the 'full' version tools don't. The only way to know for sure is to do the HW/SW design, create a bitstream and bootable software package and run it. Seeing lines for a device and bitgen for that device flagged as past support in the License Manager isn't very encouraging.

I have a few versions of the WebPack installed and used those for the Z020 based Zedboard.  I don't think that I have any WebPack installations of 2017.4 or newer. What I suspect is that the free tool support for anything other than the Z010, Z020, or Z030 are limited.

[zygot]

So my WIn10 box has Vivado 2018.2 which might be a WebPack install but I don't remember ( is there a way to know from running Vivado? )

I found the Genesys ZU3EG OOB on Digilent's GIT. There were no notes about what version was created in so I tried using the tcl command prompt to create a project. This failed of course because that's when I found out that the project needs Vivado 2019.1 to work. My WIN10 box has that version but also a license for the device and bitgen for that device. My other option was to try creating the project on my WIN7 box but the latest version there is 2018.2. I have a third option which is a Centos box but that has 3 Vivado installations that latest being Vivado 2016.3 (likely a WebPack install).

Unsurprisingly, I did get a bitstream on the WIN10 box using Vivado 2019.1, but then I have a license for that. I don't have the hardware to see if I can configure a device and decided that I have more important things to do at the moment than run through the SDK. Note that all of my installations are the Design Edition not WebPack.

Some people have broadband and the time to install every version of Vivado that comes out, just in case they need to replicate a particular demo project. I'm not one of those people.

 

[Wyllyam]

Zygot,

I poked around my installation of 2019.2, which was a WebPACK installation, but I don't think there's a away to see that explicitly after the fact. Though, you could maybe take a roundabout way of checking your licenses with Xilinx. This wouldn't guarantee it was/wasn't a WebPACK install, but you may be able to make a reasonable assumption from there. Just a thought.

Back to the main topic at hand:

• The XCZU3EG is supported by WebPACK, as is the XCZU5EV.
• "Starting 2019.2, Xilinx SDSoC™ development environments are unified into an all-in-one Vitis™ unified software platform. There will be no 2019.2 or future releases of Xilinx SDSoc Development Environment." (link)
  • This does not include MIPI CSI-2 IP, so we provided a voucher for this with the Genesys ZU board because we thought it would be valuable for vision applications for which the Genesys ZU is well-suited.

I hope that clears this up some more, but let me know if you have other thoughts or questions. 

 

[JColvin]

I also want to confirm that I removed my license from my AppData folder for Xilinx licenses (and restarted Vivado 2019.1 to confirm it doesn't detect the license) and was able to successfully generate HW OOB bitstream for the XCZU3EG. I do not have the board itself though so I am not able to directly test this design, but I hope to receive one soon to test.

Thanks,
JColvin

[zygot]

1 hour ago, Wyllyam said:

I hope that clears this up some more, but let me know if you have other thoughts or questions.

Hey, thanks for taking the time to reply.

I have spent hours trying to 'prove' one way or another that Design Edition installation of Vivado 2019.2 will allow me to use the Genesys ZU-5EV board, when that becomes a real product. As I pointed out I did at least create a bitstream for the Genesys ZU-3EG using Vivado 2019.1.. as that's the version the OOB was created with. As I have a node-locked license for the XCU3EG device this wasn't surprising.

I did manage to find a demo project for an XCZU5EV board from Trenz that should work with Vivado 2018.2, which happens to be installed on my WIN10 box. Again, the license Manager specifically indicates that I have a license for the 3EG and 7EV devices and bit_gen for this versio of Vivado. Unfortunately, the tcl script failed to create a project so I was unable to get to a resolution. I should mention that I did manage to see a message while all of this is running indicating that VIvado did get a license for the ZU7EV device but since I never got to a bitstream I'm not sure what to make of that. But Vivado 2019.2 License Manager duly reports that both the zu7ev and zu7ev_bitgen licensees are past support.

As my WIN10 Vitis + Vivado 2019.2 installation indicates that my ZU7EV license has expired and there is a Vivado 2019.2 trd project for my ZCU106 board I decided to try one more time to see if the License Manager is or isn't relevant. After over an hour of processing Vivado abruptly exited due to a fatal Java runtime error (??!!??) before completing all of the myriad synthesis builds; and this was just for the Ethernet 10G demo oart if the trd. The Xilinx trd pdf document is lacking in useful build information but does mention that the Pentalinux build environment is required... and that has to run on a Linux Host.

So there are a few issues for me here before I can consider buying one of your new boards.

First is the Vivado version. Clearly, reasons that aren't obvious, Digilent has chosen not to use the latest version of Vivado tools. Generally, when licenses are required versions matter. The only thing that I have managed to conclude about Vivado 2019.2 is that it is a horribly broken toolset. Even though Vitis happlly installed itself on my WIN10 box even the official Xilinx board releases suggest that  I can't use it for a complete HW/SW project on WIN10. The documentation is horrible, which in past experiences is a really bad sign. Vivado 2019.2 doen't have a 'launch the SDK' button because there is no SDK, just Vitas. Vitas will launch the hardware tools, but only for new platforms or a few existing older platforms. YIKES!!!

No one seems to be able to tell me what my XCZU3EG and XCZU7EV licenses are good for, if the WebPack tools support development for these devices.

This is a problem, not only for potential customers like me, but for Xilinx partners like Digilent. So, I'll just have to wait until Digilent releases an OOB for the Genesys ZU-5EV that I can build with Vivado 2019.1 on mys system (I suppose that I'll have to install Vivado 2019.1 onto a Linux box to do the software development).

One resolution that I have made is to follow my own advice and verify that the tools will allow me to use a platform before making a purchase. The burden of proof shouldn't be on the user. It took me a week of failed attempts to download Vitis 2019.2 onto my WIN10 box so that I could install it.

1 hour ago, Wyllyam said:

This does not include MIPI CSI-2 IP, so we provided a voucher for this with the Genesys ZU board because we thought it would be valuable for vision applications for which the Genesys ZU is well-suited.

And that's the problem. What other licenses do I need to use the Genesys ZU-5EV features and what version of Vivado do I need to actually do development with it?

[elodg]

Hello @zygot,

I added a section to the Genesys ZU RM on software and IP support: https://reference.digilentinc.com/reference/programmable-logic/genesys-zu/reference-manual#software_support.

Let me know, if it helps.

[zygot]

@elodg

Hey, thanks. Your changes are certainly helpful and explicit.

I think that I'm going to table development with Vivado 2019.2 for a while until Xilinx can support it's new software development regimen better. [edit] though I will play with Vitis and the Zedboard...

I'm looking forward to the availability of pricing, delivery, and documentation on the ZU5EV..

[zygot]

I have managed to install Webpack Vivado 2019.1 onto Ubuntu 19.1 and created my own ZCU106 HW/SW application. So the question of licenses for the ZU devices is mostly resolved, though I haven't run into any restrictions for the ZU7EV device yet if there are any.

[Steven Cornett]

Your webpage for the Genesys Zynq UltraScale board mentioned that there is a ZU-5EV upcoming.

From the reference manual online, it seems to have the FMC-HPC at high speed for RF data acquisition cards.  Is that true?

Also, when do expect it to be for sale to the public? 

Thanks for any help you can give.

[elodg]

That is false. The Genesys ZU does NOT have High Pin-Count FMC: https://reference.digilentinc.com/reference/programmable-logic/genesys-zu/reference-manual#low-pin_count_fmc_connector.

Still there is one gigabit lane (DP0) wired to the GTH Quad, which can be used for this purpose.

We do not have a release date yet, sorry.

[Steven Cornett]

Then, in that case, which FMC DAQ, and particularly DAC cards, have the best chance of working with the Genesys ZU.  Would it be a card like the AD9788 demo card with FMC converter (which fit in the KC705), or the 4DSP FMC150?

[zygot]

20 minutes ago, Steven Cornett said:

Then, in that case, which FMC DAQ, and particularly DAC cards, have the best chance of working with the Genesys ZU.

I doubt that you will get a answer that is close to what you want from Digilent. I've posted extensively on their forums about converter FMC mezzanine cards for Xilinx boards.

All I can say here is that either you find a combination FPGA platform and mezzanine card that does what you need and has support for your exact FPGA platform or do the homework involved in figuring it out for yourself. Understand the Series7 SelectIO, Clocking, and possibly transceiver user guides and prepare to trace signal paths from schematics. I wish that I had a better reply.