Vivado installation

The software we use for simulation and to synthesize a design for the FPGA is Xilinx Vivado. Installers are available for both Linux Mac and Windows. On linux, we recommend against trying to install vivado through your package manager, since we require a specific version of the software. You can download the installer at the following address https://www.xilinx.com/support/download. Make sure you get version 2023.2 ("Vivado Design Suite - HLx 2023.2") (though likely 2022.2 also works). Before downloading, you may need to create an account. During installation, select Vitis as the edition to be installed, with the following components:

The installation requires between 50GB and 100GB, and doesn’t need a license after installation to be used.

Cable drivers

Vivado might complain about missing cable drivers on linux. To install:

cd <vivado_install_dir>/data/xicom/cable_drivers/lin64/install_script/install_drivers/
sudo ./install_drivers

Read more at https://docs.amd.com/r/en-US/ug973-vivado-release-notes-install-license/Installing-Cable-Drivers