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The cost of developing on one of these cheap boards is only meaningful if you're able to leverage a vendor's free but limited-to-select-architectures developmen
by metaphor 8y ago
The cost of developing on one of these cheap boards is only meaningful if you're able to leverage a vendor's free but limited-to-select-architectures development suite. E.g. briefly looking through the list, the MiniZed with a Zynq XC7Z007S is listed at $89, but according to Xilinx, this isn't targetable by Vivado WebPACK[1]; a node-locked license will run you an additional US$3k.
EDIT: Manual browsing missed XC7Z007S in the list, which is indeed targetable by WebPACK. List of dev boards is lengthy, but the principle takeaway is not to presume that a cheap dev board is targetable by a vendor's free development suite.
[1] https://www.xilinx.com/products/design-tools/vivado/vivado-webpack.html#architecture https://www.xilinx.com/products/design-tools/vivado/vivado-w...
- rjsw 8y agoYour link does list the Zynq XC7Z007S as supported by Vivado WebPACK. It also shows up as an option when I create a new project in my installed copy.
- metaphor 8y agoManual browsing on mobile...whoops! You are indeed correct. However, the principle nevertheless stands and it would behoove anyone interested in tinkering with one of these boards to verify that the architecture is indeed targetable by its respective free tool offering.
- slededit 8y agoIt's only the really expensive ones that require a paid license. You generally aren't going to be getting a $3000 FPGA just to tinker around.
- ChuckMcM 8y agoIts good to check for that, and it is good to know that you can sign up for a class at a community college (pretty much any class) and qualify for the "student" rate on the bigger development packages[1]. That said it looks like most of the chips mentioned in the list that I can check with either WebPack or Quartus seem to be supported. [1] I took a class on machining and realized I could pick up a copy of Solidworks for $50 in the bookstore.