> The vendor tools ARE leagues better than the open source alternatives, but it doesn't mean the open source stuff is just for toy projects It’s not a question

> The vendor tools ARE leagues better than the open source alternatives, but it doesn't mean the open source stuff is just for toy projects It’s not a question of developer experience. We heartily agree that using Vivado sucks. My point is that there’s no way around using Vivado (or the Altera equivalent) if you want to use the most useful parts of modern FPGAs. It’s simply not possible to do things like access the GTH transceivers or custom MAC blocks using open source FPGA tools. These are table stakes capabilities to make these chips useful. You can only use vendor tools to access them. I suspect - but cannot prove - that Xilinx has agreements with IP vendors about how much they are allowed to reveal about the guts of the different devices they integrate into Zynq family die. I also suspect that Xilinx has considerable intellectual property investment into the underlying architecture of their PL. Making 600MHz programmable fabric is no mean technical feat. Open sourcing their tools is probably something they judge a risk to revealing those technical advantages.