"Arty A7-35" Artix-35T Development Board

What it is

The Arty A7-35 is a development board which features a Xilinx Artix-35T FPGA. It features a 450 mhz clock, a big pile of LUTs, and a bunch of IO pins and some other nice things. The only toolchain for it that I am aware of is proprietary, but it is available on Linux and seems to work reasonably well.

Useful Links

• Arty Overview 💾

  This page gives a high level overview of the board's capabilities, and contains a bunch of useful links.

• Arty Reference Manual 💾

  This reference page has a nice diagram of the board and IO pins, and explains important things like power stuff and jumpers and so on.

• Installing Vivado and Digilent Board Files 💾

  This tutorial explains how to install the Vivado IDE and relevant board files necessary to use this FPGA.

• Getting Started With Vivado 💾

  This tutorial explains the basics of using Vivado. It explains the gui layout, creating a simple project, configuring the interface between the program and the hardware, the compilation process, and uploading the program to the board. In other words, this covers all of the basics needed to go from zero to LED. This does *not* explain how to make the program persistent however. That is covered in the programming guide.

• XDC file for this board 💾

  This is the config file hooking up IO ports to names that your choice HDL will recognize. The lines are all commented out. As the file states, just uncomment what you need, and change the port names if you like.
  According to the git repository, this XDC file appears to be under the MIT license.

• Arty Programming Guide 💾

  This tutorial explains how to use Vivado via JTAG and quad SPI flash. In both cases a standard micro USB cable is used. The quad SPI flash approach is necessary to have a persistent program on the FPGA.

• Arty Schematic 💾

• Xilinx "7 Series" Datasheet 💾

  This datasheet covers the Xilinx "7 series" FPGAs. Among many other things, this covers the "Artix-7", of which this particular Arty uses the XC7A35T. I think.

Development Environment Setup Overview

I recently ran through setting up the development environment on a Windows 10 machine, so here is a rough outline of the process:

1. Install Vivado 2018.2

   Follow the Installing Vivado and Digilent Board Files 💾 guide. The "Vivado WebPACK Edition" is the "edition" you want specifically.

2. Download the Board Files

   The guide linked in the previous step explains how to install the build files, but it didn't work for me.

   Here's what I did instead: Download the board files, and extract them somewhere. Look for the folder "vivado-boards-master/new/board_files/" in the extracted files. Copy the contents of that folder into "C:\Xilinx\Vivado\2018.2\data\boards\board_files\".

3. Grab the "XDC" Constraint File and Save it Somewhere Useful

   You can find it here 💾.

4. Create a Test Project

   Create a new project via the workflow described in the Getting Started With Vivado 💾 guide. Import the "XDC" constraint file into your project. I recommend selecting the "copy" option instead of the "link" option, since you'll modify it.

   Here's a simple blinky light example I wrote that you can use to make sure it works, and here is the modified subset of the xdf file" needed to make that blink example work on the Arty A7-35.

5. Build!

   First run "Run Synthesis".

   The do "Run Implementation".

   The do "Generate Bitstream".

   If you run out of ram for either of these, lower the number of jobs. If a step fails, fix the errors before moving onto the next step.

   The resulting bitstream file will show up in Path\To\Your\Project\ProjectName.runs\impl_1\blinkfrien.bit or something like that.

6. MAKE IT GO UP

   Open the hardware manager. Click the "Open Target" (in the side bar or at the top of the window) link and select "Auto Connect". After it connects, click "Program Device" in the Flow Navigator, or right click on the thing that says "xc7a35t_0 (1)" in the little tree view and select "Program Device...". Point it to the bitstream file from the previous step and hit "Program".

   Assuming you used my blink light example linked above, you should see LD4 start blinking on the board. This program will continue to run until you unplug the board.

   For more information about programming the board consult the Arty Programming Guide 💾. This includes instructions on how to make your program persistent via the quad SPI flash.