Xilinx SP605 evaluation board question on ISE support

[cncjerry]

I'm new to FPGA systems.  The measurement system I am building was developed on a Xilinx sp605 Evaluation board.  The person that wrote the code said that he had tried it on the latest ISE 14.6 and then 14.7 but didn't mention the versions that came with the eval board kit which was 11.1 with the 11.3 upgrade.  I'm trying to limit my questions to him to be about the system opposed to getting the foundation hardware running.  I am downloading 14.7 but had read that the 11.3 and later versions as late as 13.x are locked to the eval board so I'm now wondering if I'll be able to use 14.7 on this board without a full license?  The other question I have is that he provided the FPGA bit stream so I don't think I'll need anything other than the USB Jtag driver right?

Said another way, I have ISE 11.3 and know that 14.7 will run on the board but don't know if I need a license for 14.7 or not.  Part 2 is if I even have to worry about this since he sent me the FPGA bitstream that is loaded from the PC application he provides.

Thanks for any help understanding this.


Jerry

[SiliconWizard]

This board had a Spartan XC6SLX45T: https://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/ek-s6-sp605-g.html
Xilinx ISE Webpack (the free version) supports all Spartan 6 up to 75T:
https://www.xilinx.com/products/design-tools/ise-design-suite/ise-webpack.html
https://www.xilinx.com/publications/matrix/Software_matrix.pdf

So there should be absolutely no problem using the latest ISE Webpack (14.7) with this board. Unless maybe the specific project uses some IP that is NOT free and has an additional license (and, if so, if said license would be tied to a specific version of ISE...) But if your  colleague said he tried 14.7, then I guess there is no IP license issue. And you should be good to go.

If all you need is configure the FPGA, you could use a number of other free tools. Digilent Adept comes to mind.

[cncjerry]

I have the  Xilinx SP605 working with the custom application that loads the FPGA bitstream over the Jtag port.  I've had an interest in FPGAs for quite a while and finally having one, I would like to learn some basic coding.  I plan to go to the Xilinx site and look for a tutorial or something unless someone can point me at a more expeditious way to come up to speed.

thanks,

Jerry