{"id":27591,"date":"2019-10-17T09:33:50","date_gmt":"2019-10-17T16:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.digilentinc.com\/?p=27591"},"modified":"2023-01-09T10:42:13","modified_gmt":"2023-01-09T18:42:13","slug":"what-we-learned-at-xdf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digilent.com\/blog\/what-we-learned-at-xdf\/","title":{"rendered":"The Vitis Unified Software Platform: What We Learned at XDF"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

What do cancer research, finance, genome sequencing, driverless cars, and outer space have in common? Aside from all being fascinating applications, each of them are progressing through the use of FPGA technology! To infinity and beyond, right? October’s Xilinx Developer Forum in San Jose was a great reminder of just how compelling and avante-garde an industry we are in. Sometimes the FPGA<\/a> market can feel niche and small – even living in a technology hub like Seattle and having frequent conversations with other techies and engineers, it isn’t uncommon to encounter puzzled looks when I bring FPGA into the conversation. And, to this point, the central theme of XDF was that it’s OK that not everyone is familiar with FPGAs – they shouldn’t have to be<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This illustrates the main point of\u00a0Vitis, Xilinx’s new Unified Software Platform<\/a> unveiled at XDF.\u00a0<\/strong>According to Xilinx CEO Victor Peng’s keynote at the conference, adaptive computing is only gaining momentum across all markets. And\u00a0in order to serve the growing markets\u00a0for adaptive computing, Xilinx must make their tools increasingly appealing to software engineers and scientists, not just RTL engineers.\u00a0In the age of\u00a0machine learning, machine vision, 5G and AI, and other big data operations, the pool of\u00a0application\u00a0software\u00a0developers\u00a0and data scientists is\u00a0much deeper\u00a0than that of hardware\u00a0engineers – and\u00a0it’s growing faster.\u00a0Xilinx is focused on evolving their tools so\u00a0that these folks focused on the “softer side of design”\u00a0can benefit from the power and flexibility of\u00a0FPGA\u00a0acceleration without even needing to know \u201chow to spell FPGA,\u201d which was a popular saying throughout the conference.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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This pyramid represents the relative effort Xilinx has put\u00a0in to\u00a0date on the different elements of the company’s tools. The reality is that the people available with the required skill sets for each element would look inversely proportionate,\u00a0meaning\u00a0that\u00a0there\u00a0is\u00a0A\u00a0LOT\u00a0of\u00a0untapped potential.<\/em><\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Vitis\u00a0is a compilation of\u00a0existing\u00a0Xilinx tools into a single environment.\u00a0While the tools may look the same, bringing all Xilinx devices under a single design environment should improve ease of use, development flow, and validation.\u00a0This defines the core of\u00a0Vitis’\u00a0value – enhanced productivity. With it, application developers can\u00a0continue to innovate on algorithm design\u00a0and leverage compute acceleration\u00a0without waiting for the\u00a0prohibitively long design cycle of custom ASICs.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Xilinx Unified Software Platform is a repackaging of existing Xilinx tools.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

While the functionality might not be inherently different, the emphasis on\u00a0open-source is a definite demarcator.\u00a0Vitis\u00a0is \u201cfree and open-source,\u201d and according to Peng, this marks a new era of software developer focus at Xilinx.\u00a0This begs the question, though: what does free and open-source actually mean?\u00a0Vitis\u00a0will be completely free and available for download without barrier, but in order to program Xilinx hardware, Vivado and a Vivado license will still be required.\u00a0Vitis\u00a0can<\/em> be installed without Vivado for software development, but the hardware acceleration function will be lost.\u00a0Great pains were taken to ensure that development on Vivado will not cease.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

So, what all will the\u00a0Vitis download\u00a0include?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n