The Vivado design suite is the set of tools provided by Xilinx and is used to design, program, and debug Xilinx’s line of FPGAs. This course covers all of the different aspects and capabilities of the Vivado design suite. This course covers everything from the very basics to the more complex topics. This course is designed so that the student who has no experience with Vivado can take the course by starting with the very basics topics such as creating projects and design files. There are also more advanced topics so that the experienced student can learn things like how to create and program a soft core processor using the tools provided by Xilinx. This course covers many topics, including:

• Downloading & Installing Vivado (I will be using a Windows machine, however you can install this on a Linux machine as well)
• Creating Projects
• Simulating Your Hardware Designs
• Using Existing IP Cores
• Creating & Managing Your Custom IP Cores
• Creating and Programming a Micro Blaze soft core processor
• Programming your Development Board
• Automating Vivado Using Tool Command Line (tcl) Scripts
• Creating Your Own Design Constraints
• Converting Your C Code to a Hardware Design

Vivado contains many tools and this course will cover all of them, including:

• Vivado's Hardware Manager - This is used to load the hardware designs onto the FPGA or on board memory.
• Vivado's Simulator - This is what is used to simulate and verify that your design is working as expected.
• Integrated Logic Analyzer (ILA)- This is used to act as a virtual oscilloscope while your design is running on the actual hardware target.
• Vivado's High Level Synthesis - This tool read C based code and converts it to a HDL based design.
• Xilinx's Software Development Kit (SDK) - This is the tool used to write C code that will run on the soft core processor implemented on the FPGA.

This course is laid out in such a way that each section takes on a specific topic or tool associated with Vivado. There are downloadable files that will have the students interact with Vivado so that they can get a hands on learning experience. The students will complete a hardware design project that will take them through all of the design steps neccasary so that they can start implementing their own idea's on Xilinx FPGAs using Vivado Design Suite. Vivado is a very powerful tool that has a lot to offer and this course is designed to help aid you in learning how to use this powerful tool.