Digilent ARTY is a $99 Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA Board with Arduino Headers

Low cost FPGA boards with Arduino headers are nothing new, as we’ve seen before with Arduissimo and Papilio DUO, but both of these boards are based on Spartan 6 FPGA, while the recent Digilent ARTY board is powered by an Artix-7 FPGA. Beside the hardware differences, Spartan 6 FPGAs only support Xilinx ISE Design Suite, while Artix-7 parts are also supported by Vivado Design Suite, which according to Xilinx has a much better workflow and user interface.

Digilent ARTY specifications:

• FPGA – Xilinx XC7A35T-L1CSG324I with 33,280 logic cells, 1,800 Kb block RAM, 90 DSP slices, and 250 I/O pins
• System memory – 256 MB DDR3L SDRAM
• Storage – 16 MB of QSPI Flash
• Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet
• Expansion interfaces
  • 4 Digilent compatible Pmod interfaces enabling 32 user I/O pins: 2 Pmods routed as differential pairs, paired to fit dual-wide Pmods
  • Arduino UNO R3 shield / chipKit interface
• Debugging – USB-UART Interface, JTAG Programming/Configuration Port
• Misc – 4x user RGB LEDs, 4x user LEDs, 4x user slide switches, 4x user push button switches
• Power Supply – 7-15V input via DC jack or headers, 5V via micro USB port
• Dimensions – N/A

Vivado Design Suite comes with various editions, starting from the free WebPACK Edition with limited features to the System Edition with the complete integration and verification feature set selling for close to $5,000. According to the product brief, ARTY evaluation kit includes the Design Edition, locked to XC7A35T device, and valued at $2,995.

However, ARTY development board / evaluation kit sells for just $99 on Digilent or Avnet. Technical documentation and design resources can be found on Arty Resource Center.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.

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