Xilinx Zynq - XC7Z010 - Installing Vivado

Log of what I did

I start at the Xilinx download page.

https://www.xilinx.com/support/download.html

I select the Xilinix Unfied installer 2020.2 for linux (354.08M)

I have to make a xilinx account, with the usual email activation scheme. For some reason it took two attempts.

Once I am in, I navigate to the Vivado Design Suite HLx Edition via the Hardware design tools tab.

And away goes the download.

The installer is a giant bin file that file tells me is a posix shell script, so:

chmod a+x Xilinx_Unified_2020.2_1118_1232_Lin64.bin
./Xilinx_Unified_2020.2_1118_1232_Lin64.bin

I give my Xilinx username and password and I get a menu asking me exactly what I want. I select Vitis, Vivado, BootGen, and Petalinux. Well, it only allows one, so I go with Vivado.

Next I select HL Design edition (I probably should have gone with Webpack, which is the free version, but I want to see if I get into trouble with this selection

Now it wants to install to /tools/Xilinx. I create /opt/Xilinx instead and tell it to use that.

It gets busy with 31.72 G to download.

Prices for licenses are very expensive. I am seeing:

Node-Locked License Price: $4795
Floating License Price: $5795

So, it was probably stupid for me to download the full suite as I won't be able to use it without a license and will have to go back and repeat all this to get WebPack.

I go away for several hours. When I return it has a nice "Installation Progress" window that tells me:

-- It took 1 hr 19 m to download files
-- It took 26 minutes to install files

A popup tells me to run installLibs.sh in /opt/Xilinx/Vitis/2020.2/scripts as root

I click OK and the install summary goes away. But there is another window now, a Vivado license manager that wants me to choose one of several options.

-- a free 30 day trial
-- get Vivado or IP evaluation licenses
-- get free ISE WebPack, ISE/Vivado IP or PetaLinux Licenses
-- get my full purchased license

I select the free webpack and click "connect now".

This launches a browser (firefox) and requires me to login to the Xilinx website fressh and new.

The website puts me on a Product Licensing page under the "create new license tab".

I see three possible licenses for now.

-- Vivado Design Suite HL Webpack 2015 and earlier
-- ISE Webpack
-- Xilinx MicroBlase/All Programmable SoC SDK standalone

I select the second (ISE Webpack) and click "Generate Node-locked license"

It reports success and tells me I have been mailed the license. Note the license is generated with Host ID: ANY

I see the email. Apparently the license will also be avaialable on their website under the "Manage Licenses" tab.

I leave the license manager GUI up for now ....

Reading the instructions that come with the email.

vlm will launch the license manager (or so they say).

The license is an attachment I save to /home/tom/Xilinx.lic

In the license manager, there is a "Load License" tab with a "Copy License" button. It tells me that it will copy the license into $HOME/.Xilinx (which I could simply do myself), but I let their GUI do it, in case there is other special magic.

Then I exit the license manager GUI

Post install fiddling

Now, what about the script I am supposed to run as root?

    /opt/Xilinx/Vitis/2020.2/scripts/installLibs.sh

I don't find this on my system. Running locate does not find it either. Locate does find "vlm" in /opt/Xilinx/Vivado/2020.2/bin/vlm

I get brave and do:

cd /opt/Xilinx/Vivado/2020.2/bin
./vivado

There is lots of disk activity and quite a long delay, but it finally launches. I see lots of mention of Tcl. I hate Tcl, but as long as their software works, this is all the more reason not to touch any of it with a 10 foot pole. The startup (splash?) screen offers a "Quick Start" as well as a "Learning Center".

I try learning center, and it launches a "Document Navigator" with no end of stuff I can read. Many of these are "UG910" sort of documents, and certainly look like PDF documents, but running locate does not turn up any files with names like ug910 or UG910 with or without a pdf ending.

In fact, it looks like it is pulling these off their website via a URL like https://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/sw_manuals/xilinx2020.2/ug910-vivado-getting-started.pdf

Knowing this could be handy, because their PDF browser crashed in short order. Looking at some notes online, I see another person added this directory to their path.

export PATH="/opt/Xilinx/Vivado/2018.3/bin:"