Compatibilty of FPGALink with Spartan-7 Devices

[Michael Simmonds]

My company is questioning whether we should be designing our new instrument around Spartan-6 devices (now denigrated as a legacy product by Xilinx) or their new Spartan-7 series that use the Vivado tools.  I have noted that vendors, such as DigiKey do not even offer devices in this new series, but our engineers still feel it would be prudent to consider this option. 

Do you have any information about using the FPGALink system with Spartan-7?  The main concern appears to be with the compatibility of the JTAG interface and downloading program files, but there may be more subtle problems.  Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Chris McClelland]

Hello Mike. I have not tried using FPGALink with a Spartan-7, but I would be very surprised if it cannot be made to work. I agree with your engineers too - it makes sense to use the most recent generation of chips. The main thing to watch for is the I/O standards supported by the pins you choose for the CommFPGA link. I'd be happy to review your schematics under NDA if you wish.

Chris

On Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 7:03 AM, Michael Simmonds <simm...@montana.net> wrote:

My company is questioning whether we should be designing our new instrument around Spartan-6 devices (now denigrated as a legacy product by Xilinx) or their new Spartan-7 series that use the Vivado tools.  I have noted that vendors, such as DigiKey do not even offer devices in this new series, but our engineers still feel it would be prudent to consider this option. 

Do you have any information about using the FPGALink system with Spartan-7?  The main concern appears to be with the compatibility of the JTAG interface and downloading program files, but there may be more subtle problems.  Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

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[Michael Simmonds]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your comments.  If we do move to the Spartan-7 at this time, I would greatly appreciate having you review any circuitry related to the FPGALink.  I am happy to make this an open discussion and share anything we learn about using the 7-series with this community. Any proprietary stuff is on the "other side" of the FPGA.

[Michael Simmonds]

We just received some information directly from Xilinx concerning availability of Spartan-7 parts and documentation.  For what it is worth, here is their reply:

As far as actual production silicon for the Spartan 7 this wont be available until next year. 7S50 is the first part that will be available in ES silicon Q1’17 and the rest follow from there.

Spartan 7 documentation will be part of the 7 series since it is based on the Artix 7 fabric without the transceivers. There is an early access lounge you can sign up for to get more information:

https://www.xilinx.com/registration/sign-in.html?oamProtectedResource=wh%3Dwww.xilinx.com%20wu%3D%2Fmember%2Fspartan-7_fpga_ea.html%20wo%3D1%20rh%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.xilinx.com%20ru%3D%252Fmember%252Fspartan-7_fpga_ea.html

So at this time, we will have to begin developing our hardware around the series-6 devices.

[Henry Hallam]

On Nov 16, 2016 10:40, "Michael Simmonds" <simm...@montana.net> wrote:
...

> So at this time, we will have to begin developing our hardware around the series-6 devices.

If I were you, I would try to develop with the Artix-7 instead. The Spartan-6 is not supported by Xilinx's modern tool chain (Vivado), so if you start with Spartan-6 and later move to Spartan-7 a lot of your initial work and learning will be wasted, whereas porting from Artix-7 to Spartan-7 will be a non-event.  The smaller Artix-7 devices aren't crazy expensive.

- Henry

p.s. Hi Chris, hope you're doing well.

[Michael Simmonds]

Hi Henry,

Thanks for the tip.  We will look at Artix-7 for sure.  Once again I am in your debt: your robust protocol for writing/reading multi-byte registers has worked beautifully.

Mike