February 27, 2023

Xilinx Zynq - Update Vivado and Vitis to 2022.1.2

This took an entire afternoon and evening. It took over 3 hours to do the 55G download. I am pretty sure the Xilinx site throttles download speeds. It then took an equal amount of time to install.

I actually did the update to 2022.1.2, but discovered that I already have 2022.1 installed. About half way into the download I read a notice that they only recommend 2022.1.2 for users who need support for some very new devices and they recommend everyone else stick with 2022.1. So this whole business may have been a waste of my time. I will shift to using 2022.1. My /u1/Xilinx directory now has multiple versions and is over 300G in size. This download told me it would use 85G when installed -- so having 4 versions (and Vitis) would explain the 300+ G of diskspace I am now using. I should prune back to 2019.1 (which is "special" as it is the last Vivado to include the SDK) and 2022.1.

It turns out this update overwrote my 2022.1 install with 2022.1.2, so I don't have the option of running 2022.1, and I guess that is OK. At least I hope it is.

On top of all that, I have now discovered that 2022.2 is available. I was trusting the "Xilinx information center" thing that pops up and nags me every time I log in to tell me about the latest available version, but that was misplaced trust apparently. I could let my computer grind away for a day installing 2022.2 at this point, but I may just wait for 2023.1.

Setting up 2022.1.2

I have a script "vivado" in /home/tom/bin -- I edit it so it starts the 2022.1 version.
I now need to install board files (for the Ebaz, Zybo, and Zedboard). I decided to just copy the board files from my 2019.1 install and threw together the following script to do so:
SRC=/u1/Xilinx/Vivado/2019.1/data/boards
NEW=/u1/Xilinx/Vivado/2022.1/data/boards

cp -var $SRC/board_files $NEW
cp -var $SRC/board_parts $NEW
This script is /u1/Xilinx/copy_board_files.

This seems to work just fine. I don't know for sure what the "board_parts" directory is. It was there in 2019.1 and missing in 2022.1 so I copied it as well.

Here are my notes from the update:

Xilinx information center comes up every time I log in.

I select Vivado 2022.1.2 "update"

It asks for my Xilinx credentials, which I find and enter.

Now it has launched the Vivado/Vitis 2022.1.2 Updater.

It says it will update the Vivado/Vitis Unified Software Platform
to 2022.1.2 (I have 2022.1 apparently).
It will update the following:

/tools/Xilinx/Vitis/2022.1
/tools/Xilinx/Vivado/2022.1
/tools/Xilinx/Vitis_HLS/2022.1
/tools/Xilinx/Model_Composer/2022.1

Note that I have skipped 2021.2

It says it will download 55G, need 142G of disk space, and will use
88G of Disk when it is finished.

I start it at 6:50PM.  It predicts 3.5 hours.
And this may be just the predicted time for the download.

After I launched the install, I see a note that unless you are using
certain new devices (Artix UltraScale+) you should continue using
Vivado ML 2022.1  Probably I can get rid of everything other than
2019.1 and 2022.1 (including the download I am doing right now).

The advertising art that goes by while it is busy talks about:

    Zynq
    Zynq Ultrascale
    Vivado ML editions
    Vitis
    Ultrafast Design Methodology

I peek at /tools/Xilinx/Vivado and I have 3 Vivado versions
(and soon I will have 4).

    Vivado/2019.1
    Vivado/2021.2
    Vivado/2022.1

I also have:

    Vitis/2021.2
    Vitis/2022.1

I also have "ISE" for use with pre-Zynq boards I have.

Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Computer Info / [email protected]