7 Ways to Leave Your Spartan-6 Challenge - What Toolchain version are you using?

Thanks for opening this discussion.

I am still at the same research point as you and I have the same doubts. Until I have time to make my first bare metal application on a soft MicroBlaze I will continue with the doubts.

I'm going to order some PMOD modules without even looking if I'm going to be able to use them but I'm sure I'll find them useful in the future. There is HDL code for many PMODs in that repository, I think at least for now trying them out as hardware only will be a good experience. I don't know if it will be very difficult either, I have no experience. I studied VHDL in the early 90's and haven't used it since.

Getting oriented with the Xilinx tools and the quirks of the Digilent board defs will have you cussing... but once you get oriented it is not to bad.  there is a flow...  and it does work...  but I warn you...  the teeth are curved in....   once you start down the correct path you don't have much flexibility to change it.  Adding unsanctioned IP is a pain in the ass but it is doable.

Xilinx like many other IP managment companies has particular ways they want their IP used.   And outside their preferred development path there be dragons, brambles and razor sharp sheet metal!

I recommend using latest release (2022.1). Latest release can import projects from older version and contains bug fixes to known issues from all previous versions. I faced isseu on 1.1.2022. Some tools stopped worked because of int overflow (https://support.xilinx.com/s/question/0D52E00006uxnnFSAQ/2022-timestamp-overflow-error-2201011128-is-an-invalid-argument-please-specify-an-integer-value?language=en_US) and I am not sure if all releases as old as 2019 were patched. I gues that only 2021 and 2022 were but have not tried. So, I recommend using always latest release.

There is a patch for the older releases, as a separate download and activity after installation. Xilinx didn't release new installers with the fix for those older versions, though.

Hello,

I am using Vivado 18.3 Version which is quite stable and the most used version. The latest versions are too heavy for my personal PC, my pc completely hangs while using newer versions. But 18.3 is lightweight compared to newer ones and as Spartan 7 devices are legacy ones there should not be any issue with old versions.

This issue is seen only for HLS IPs as mentioned there is Y2K22 patch available to fix this.

support.xilinx.com/.../76960

I've been using 2019.1 and 2022.1 on two different PCs. Have had success with both, when using the Arty-S7. But moving forward, I will be doing most of my work using the latests version. I keep the 2019.1 version around to open any projects from older versions of Vivado (they use SDK instead of Vitis, so it's more straight forward to open them using the older version)