Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA Trainer Board Review for Beginners

Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA Trainer Board Review for Beginners

The Basys 3 debug board from Digilent is an entry-level FPGA development board designed specifically for the Vivado Design Suite, with the Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA architecture. Basys 3 (410-183) is the latest addition to the popular Basys line of FPGA development boards and is ideal for students or beginners who are new to FPGA and Xilinx Artix-7 technology. Basys 3 includes the standard features found on all Basys boards: full ready-to-use hardware, a large set of built-in I/O devices, all the necessary FPGA support circuits, a free version of development tools and the student.

The Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA Trainer Board is an Arduino compatible board that gives the user access to a number of different inputs and outputs for connecting to other devices. This board also has a built-in USB programmer and debugger, which allows you to code, compile, download and debug your designs without any additional hardware.

Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA Pros and Cons

The Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA Trainer Board is a low-cost development board that is ideal for teaching the basics of digital design, hardware description language, and programming. It has a simple interface that supports both simulation and target operation. The board provides an affordable way to learn how to use programmable logic devices in the world of electronics.

Pros
  • Academic pricing makes it quite affordable
  • It’s perfectly designed for students and super easy to use
  • A lot of manuals on the Internet
  • Certainly one of the best boards in the 100-200 segment to learn/teach/play
Cons
  • Outdated website
  • Poor packaging
  • USB isn’t included

This board plugs into a computer via USB and uses software to emulate the Artix-7 FPGA. The board also has a USB interface that allows it to talk to your computer for debugging purposes.

Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA Features

  • Features the Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA: XC7A35T-1CPG236C
  • 33,280 logic cells in 5200 slices (each slice contains four 6-input LUTs and 8 flip-flops)
  • 1,800 Kbits of fast block RAM
  • Five clock management tiles, each with a phase-locked loop (PLL)
  • 90 DSP slices
  • Internal clock speeds exceeding 450 MHz
  • On-chip analog-to-digital converter (XADC)
  • Digilent USB-JTAG port for FPGA programming and communication
  • Serial Flash
  • USB-UART Bridge
  • 12-bit VGA output
  • USB HID Host for mice, keyboards and memory sticks
  • 16 user switches
  • 16 user LEDs
  • 5 user push-buttons
  • 4-digit 7-segment display
  • 4 Pmod ports: 3 Standard 12-pin Pmod ports, 1 dual purpose XADC signal / standard Pmod port

Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA Features

Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA is a programmable hardware module with a Pmod connector, a 7-Seg Display, 16 switches, 16 LEDs and 5 buttons. It is designed to support the development of projects using Xilinx’s Spartan-7 FPGA and Digilent’s Pmod products.

Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA Trainer Board Evaluation

Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA Trainer Board Evaluation The Basys 3 is an inexpensive but powerful way to learn about the capabilities of an FPGA. It has a large number of peripheral interfaces and plenty of learning resources to help you learn about how an FPGA works.

Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA Trainer Board Evaluation

Related Video: Introduction to the Basys 3 Board

Final Words

The Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA development board is a low-cost, flexible hardware platform for rapid prototyping of designs. It’s the most versatile FPGA board available and has many expansion options to suit your needs. Thanks for reading!

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