Regarding compatible Vivado Software version range for Arty A7 (xc7a35ticsg324-1L) & power related things.

[Abhishek]

Hi,

I have recently been allotted Arty A7 (xc7a35ticsg324-1L) FPGA for work but my queries are:

1) What are Vivado compatible software version range for this FPGA?

2) I have Micro-B to USB cable only & when I connect it to computer it shows "Power Surge" message then I change it with different Micro-B to USB cable then no message pops-up. I want to now clearly that which cable I should use for all power & programming work?

Thanks!

[JColvin]

Hi @Abhishek,

1) The AMD/Xilinx Vivado software supports the Artix 35T FPGA chip from (if I remember correctly) Vivado 2015.1 onwards. So effectively, you can use whichever version of Vivado you prefer. Newer versions will have some software improvements for various things (IPs, SDK/Vitis changes), but that will of course come at the cost of an increased installation size (probably ~50 GB for recent versions, even if you deleted unnecessary portions out of the installation after the fact). There isn't really a "right" or "wrong" version to use per se. If you are planning on just doing HDL based work on the Arty A7, then any version will work.

On Digilent's end of things, we have existing tutorials and example projects supported in 2022.1 (and a number of earlier versions): https://digilent.com/reference/programmable-logic/arty-a7/start.

2) A micro-B to USB A cable would be the one you want to use, with the micro-B connecting (tab side up) to the J10 micro-B port just above the Ethernet port on the Arty A7. I have not seen the "Power Surge" message before when connecting a device before, but regardless that is not the expected nor intended behavior. Has this board been used before or is it new?
When you connect the other cable, does the power indicator LED (LD11 in the bottom right corner below the barrel jack) light up and does your operating system detect that a device has been connected? If it does light up, and you have the MODE jumper JP1 (upper right corner) loaded, do the RGB LEDs start changing color on their own after a few seconds of waiting? (this would only happen if the Arty A7's flash memory has not been overwritten).

Thanks,
JColvin