Installing Vivado and Vitis

Overview

The labs and demos in the class use Vitis and Vivado. You can install these programs free of charge on your local machine, and these pages provide some instructions.

But the programs take up a lot of space. Also, they work well only on Windows and Ubuntu. On MacOS, you may need to run a virtual machine, which can be difficult and slow.
As an alternative, if you are an NYU student in the class, you can skip these instructions and work directly on the NYU servers.

Selecting the version

If you decide to install the program on your local machine, you first need to decide which version to use. You may not be able use the latest version of Vivado/Vitis. You must install a version that matches a valid Board Support Package (BSP) for your board: At the time of writing, the current versions are:

RFSoC 4x2: Current version is 2024.1. You can verify as follows.
- Go to Real Digital GitHub page
- Look for files like RFSoC4x2_2024_1.bsp → this means you should install Vivado/Vitis 2024.1
Pynq-Z2: Current version is 2025.1
- You can verify this setting when you try to build the Vivado project attempt to select the board. If the board is not an option, then you may have to go to an earlier version.

Downloading the Installer

Go to the Xilinx/AMD Downloads page
Select the correct version (e.g., 2024.1) and choose the Linus or Windows installer.
After signing in, download a large .bin. For linux the file will be something like FPGAs_AdaptiveSoCs_Unified_2024.1_0522_2023_Lin64.bin

Running the Installer

In Linux:
- The file will be in /home/<username>/Downloads
- Double-clicking won’t work
- Open a terminal and run:
```
 chmod +x FPGAs_AdaptiveSoCs_Unified_2024.1_0522_2023_Lin64.bin
 ./FPGAs_AdaptiveSoCs_Unified_2024.1_0522_2023_Lin64.bin
```
  This will run the installer
In Windows, you should be able to directly double click the extractor. Follow the instructions at Windows Installation
For both systems, follow the prompts:
Select Vivado and Vitis
When prompted for Devices, make sure to select SoC
You may select others, but some may require additional licenses
The installer is very large and may take several hours
In Linux, at the end, you may be prompted to run:
```
  ./installLibs.sh
```

If you are installing on Windows, the TA Ruibin Chen has provided some helpful further instructions.

Otherwise, go to launching Vitis and Vivado