How to use Arty Z7 as a standalone FPGA

[Dhanasekar J]

Hi,

I am a new bee to FPGA, but I am working as a Firmware developer. I am going to buy Arty Z7 board which as ARM + FPGA support and openCL.  How to use Arty Z7 as a Standalone FPGA?. Is it possible to do that?. Please guide me.

 

 

Thanks,

[Viktor Nikolov]

I do not have Arty Z7. Nevertheless, my experience with other Zynq boards is that the board will work as a regular FPGA when you don't put the Zynq Processing System in the HW design. You can program the PL logic in Vivado as you would with an FPGA-only board.

You just need a clocking source to drive the PL logic.
Looking into the Arty Z7 reference manual, I see that Arty Z7 has an external 125 MHz reference clock.
You would need to uncomment this constraint in the Arty-Z7-20-Master.xdc:

## Clock Signal
set_property -dict { PACKAGE_PIN H16    IOSTANDARD LVCMOS33 } [get_ports { clk }]; #IO_L13P_T2_MRCC_35 Sch=SYSCLK
create_clock -add -name sys_clk_pin -period 8.00 -waveform {0 4} [get_ports { clk }];#set

[Dhanasekar J]

@Viktor Nikolov Thanks for the info. You mean after commenting those clock signals, my Arty Z7 will behave like Standalone FPGA?. I selected this Arty Z7, because, I need to try both verilog and openCL coding. Please provide your suggestion. 

[Viktor Nikolov]

The basic steps are as follows:

• Make sure you have Diligent board files installed. This is the article with instructions.
• Create a project in Vivado for the Arty Z7 board.
• Download the Arty-Z7-20-Master.xdc or Arty-Z7-10-Master.xdc, depending on the version of your board.
• Import the XDC file as the constraints file to the project.
• Uncomment the two lines in XDC I mentioned in my previous post. They define the input port "clk" providing a 125 MHz clock. It comes from an oscillator, which is independent from Zynq PS.
• If you use a diagram in Vivado, create an input port "clk". Set the port type to Clock.
• Now, you can create an HW design that ignores the fact that there are ARM cores present on the chip. You will upload the bit file to the board using the HW manager in Vivado. You don't use Vitis. 

[Dhanasekar J]

@Viktor Nikolov I will follow the steps which you suggested. Thanks for the info. 

[Dhanasekar J]

@Viktor Nikolov Which Digilent board is good for learning  and understanding FPGA programing (Verilog). Please provide your suggestion. I will be helpful to buy further.

[digility]

3 hours ago, Dhanasekar J said:

@Viktor Nikolov Which Digilent board is good for learning  and understanding FPGA programing (Verilog). Please provide your suggestion. I will be helpful to buy further.

I'm not a FPGA expert but its obv that this is a goal based specific question. If the goal is just to learn FPGA programming or Verilog, you don't even need to buy a FPGA board. You can do many things using simulations or you can just buy a cheap one like Basys3 Board which includes trainer buttons, leds, 7 segment. I don't have knowledge about Firmware Developing but if you need a Hard Processor for your designs (you can also use MicroBlaze with other boards if you just need a Processor) you need to buy a SoC FPGA Board. Of course Arty Z7 isn't the only option, PYNQ-Z1, ZYBO- Z7, ZedBoard are right there. I belive if you search on internet you can easily find the comparisons and differences between these FPGA Boards.

 

So in short, I really suggest you to maintain your requirements at first. If you don't need to buy a FPGA board immediately just start by learning Digital Design, Verilog whatever and start coding. As the time passes it will become clearer in your mind what you want to do and you will be able to determine your needs better.

Edited November 30 by digility

[Dhanasekar J]

@Viktor Nikolov..Thanks for the info.  Any books recommended for FPGA Verilog programming (Basic to Intermediate level)?.

[Viktor Nikolov]

I used this book at the beginning of my FPGA journey: Programming FPGAs: Getting Started with Verilog, Monk, Simon

[Dhanasekar J]

@Viktor Nikolov.. Thank you for your guidance.. 

[Dhanasekar J]

@Viktor Nikolov I have a doubt.

1.  Will PYNQ-Z1 supports openCL ?.

 

Thanks,

Dhanasekar

Edited December 3 by Dhanasekar J

[Viktor Nikolov]

1 hour ago, Dhanasekar J said:

Will PYNQ-Z1 supports openCL ?.

Sorry, I do not have experience with PYNQ and openCL. Hopefully, somebody else in the audience can answer.

[Dhanasekar J]

@Viktor Nikolov Ok. Actually, I am going to buy a board. I am confused to select the board. I have selected Arty Z7, PYNXQ Z2 and ZYBO board.  I need board for FPGA Verilog, HDL and openCL learning. I don't which board supports this. 

 

 

[dpaul]

The selection of an FPGA dev board depends on:

1. What on board connections are needed (e.g. No. of on-board LEDs or slide-switches, PMOD, Ethernet, PCIe?),

2. Whether you want to do pure FPGA based design or mixed design which involves using a hard processor core - Zynq based FPGAs or normal FPGAs

3. Your budget

[Dhanasekar J]

@dpaul First I am going to execute Verilog in FPGA and then I am going to openCL. So I have selected Zynq based FPGA, because it will support hard CPU + FPGA.   My budget is around 300 USD. 

[dpaul]

@Dhanasekar J So now that you know what you need and how much money you have, go ahread and buy something! :-)

[Dhanasekar J]

@dpaulYes. I am going to purchase Arty-Z7 board.