May 18, 2022

Xilinx Zynq - Installing Vivado 2019.1 with SDK

I have been working with Vivado 2021.2 and I keep getting reminded that Vivado 2022 is available for me to install. However, for whatever reason Vivado 2019.1 is the last version that integrated the SDK with Vivado. Xilinx would like you to switch to learning Vitis for things that formerly required the SDK, and perhaps that would be wonderful. However that is another learning curve, and on top of that, there are valuable tutorials and reference material based on 2019.1 and the SDK.

Away we go

Xilinx keeps (thanks very much to them!) old versions available for install at their download center. There are versions back to 2012 and up to 2021 in the archive. They have 3 update versions of 2019.1, but those are only recommended if you need support for specific devices (which I do not). So I download the "2019.1 Full Product Installation". I also select the linux download and get the web installer.

This gives me the file Xilinx_Vivado_SDK_Web_2019.1_0524_1430_Lin64.bin This is a 120M file. 

chmod a+x Xilinx_Vivado_SDK_Web_2019.1_0524_1430_Lin64.bin
./Xilinx_Vivado_SDK_Web_2019.1_0524_1430_Lin64.bin
I ignore all warning about a newer version available. (I click Continue when that dialog appears.) This runs and I select the option to download the full 22G image and install it later. This takes 55 minutes to download. When it finishes: 
cd /u1/Xilinx/Downloads/2019.1
./xsetup
I agree to 3 license things and pick Vivado WebPack. It discovers I already have SDK 2019.1 installed, I use the back button in the installer, and rename it via the following (I could perhaps just delete it): 
cd /u1/Xilinx/SDK
mv 2019.1 2019.1.BAK
Now it also detects (Program group entry, Xilinx Design tools 2019.1 I tell it to use "Xilinx Design Tools2" since I have no clue what or where this is.

Now it goes ahead with the Install. I go away for over an hour and by the time I get back it is all done and I have a "Vivado 2019.1" on my desktop.

Board files

I have already done this for 2021.2, so I can just copy what I did for the newer version. Oddly enough, as I remember 2021.2 had no board files, but some exist for 2019.1. None of them conflict however, but I will note that 2019.1 includes something called "zed" (while I have "zedboard" in my 2021.1 collection that I got from Digilent. Here is what I do: 
cd /u1/Xilinx/Vivado/2021.2/data/boards/board_files
tar cvf /home/tom/bfiles.tar .
cd /u1/Xilinx/Vivado/2019.1/data/boards/board_files
tar xvf /home/tom/bfiles.tar
cd /home/tom
gzip bfiles.tar
I will note that this also includes the board files for the EBAZ4205 bitcoin miner board that I am playing with. I offer this collection here for anyone that might find it helpful.

Desktop

I also see several new things I don't remember on my desktop. Well, some of those were probably there before, but I haven't paid much attention to them at any case. Why do I have two flavors of Vivado 2019.1? Apparently "HLS" is the ability to write C code rather than RTL like verilog or VHDL. Not a road I am interested in at this point.
Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Computer Info / [email protected]