PYNQ – Python Productivity for Zynq

[Vijayenthiran]

Can I used the Matlab system generator with this board? I love the idea of hardware overlays, but if I want to get deep into the VHDL design, will it support? In my college we used to use system generator tool for generating the vhdl codes.

[trapperkeeper79]

I've been delving into VLSI but realize it is quite a complex topic. Can anyone familiar with this provide a TLDR? Is the idea here that instead of verilog, etc. one can use python to code a PLD/FPGA?

[kmod]

Here's the relevant bit from the overview:

  Programmable logic circuits are presented as hardware libraries called overlays. These overlays are analogous to software libraries. A software engineer can select the overlay that best matches their application. The overlay can be accessed through an application programming interface (API). Creating a new overlay still requires engineers with expertise in designing programmable logic circuits.

In other words, you're not doing direct programming of the FPGA with these new apis. Instead it looks like they are making it easier to select and use existing overlays (aka existing hardware designs) by wrapping it up in some nice Python interfaces. So as more overlays are released (right now it looks like there is only the "base" overlay) it should be easy to switch between them as you want to accelerate different sorts of problems.

You might say "why doesn't this exist already", but the whole ecosystem is currently quite hard to use (think GPU programming but from 5 or 10 years ago) so putting some nice interfaces on it could be a big step. Will be interesting to watch.

[gravypod]

Is the academic price only for schools or does it apply to students as well?

[revelation]

Digilent academic pricing is for students, but you'll have to write some words about your project and it's a manual verification process. Worked fine for me, though.