Differences Between The Spartan-6 and Spartan-7 FPGA's
Introduction
Since the first time, Spartan-6 was introduced about 13 years ago, not only has the semiconductor technology vastly evolved, the FPGA development tools have come a long way as well. Moving from Spartan-6 to Spartan-7 also means moving to the next generation of improved FPGA development tools. The spartan-6 utilizes the AMD-Xilinx ISE (Integrated Synthesis Environment) which was a very solid toolset with features for analzying a design's timing. a handy schematic diagram view of the RTL, simulation for system-level testing with ModelSim, and target FPGA programming. Meanwhile, the Spartan-7 which is a part of AMD-Xilinx's 7 Series of FPGAs utilizes Vivado ML and Vitis toolset. Even though Vivado is a different workflow but it still encompasses the features that made the ISE so solid with the added feature that made the ISE so solid with additional features for the development of current technologies for hardware acceleration, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
The image below details the difference between the Spartan-6 and Spartan-7.
