December 15, 2024

Vivado update - December 2024

I have been running Vivado 2022.2 for several years. The Xilinx information center thing on my linux machine has been letting me know that newer versions are available. I finally decided to do the upgrade.

Part of the reason is that I had some disk problems, replaced the drive, but still don't entirely trust file integrity. Doing an install to a new version will leave all that behind.

The Process

I bring up the Xilinx information center.  It offers a Vivado and Vitis 2024.2 download.
I click the Install button.  A popup asks for my Xilinx username and password.
There is a long delay and it says "please wait".
Aha, and installer has popped up.
I skip the preferences page.
The next gives me choices, Vitis, Vivado, Bootgen, others
I can only pick one and I go with Vivado.
Next page lets me pick Standard (free) or Enterprise.  Standard of course for me.
Next page allows customization
 -- I deselect Ultrascale devices
 -- I deselect the Matlab toolbox stuff
 -- I cannot deselect Vitis HLS
 -- I deselect Kria kits
I agree to all the EULA
It will install to /tools/Xilinx/Vivado/2024.2, which is OK
-- away we go, 9 AM
-- I go away, return at 2 PM (5 hours later)
-- a popup says "install completed successfully" and I click OK
Now I am back to the Xilinx Information Center, which I dismiss.

Quick launch

In /home/tom/bin I have a script that launches:
/tools/Xilinx/Vivado/2022.4/bin/vivado
I give it a try. It launches fine. When I select one of my projects it wants to migrate it from an older version of Vivado. So that looks good, now we will need board files, so I exit and work on that.

Board files

My notes tell me that I put the s9 board files at:
/tools/Xilinx/Vivado/2022.2/data/boards/board_files/s9/1.0
My Github repo has a makefile to install these, and I use it again to install the s9 files.
mkdir -p /tools/Xilinx/Vivado/2024.2/data/boards/board_files/s9/1.0
cp * /tools/Xilinx/Vivado/2024.2/data/boards/board_files/s9/1.0
Looking now at the "board_files" directory for Vivado 2024.2, it is was entirely empty after the install. It now only contains the s9 files. When I look at the "board_files" directory for 2022.2, I see dozens of boards. I don't remember just how I gathered up all of these. I do want the ebaz4205, zybo, and zedboard, but I may as well just copy them all. I do this:
cd /tools/Xilinx/Vivado/2022.2/data/boards/board_files
tar cv /home/tom/boards.tar .
cd /tools/Xilinx/Vivado/2024.2/data/boards/board_files
tar xpvf /home/tom/boards.tar
cd /home/tom
rm boards.tar
==== I launch vivado and start from scratch with a new project I call "s9_emio". The create project wizard looks all the same. I create a block diagram and add the Zynq block. It all looks familiar and exactly the same so far.
Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Computer Info / [email protected]