Zybo Z7-10 (471-014) - FLEX license question

[Wlodzimierzhepner]

Dear Digilent team,

i'm trying to understand the license rules of SDSoC Voucher. The rules aren' t so clear for me. Could you please help me? If no, i will surely ask my question to Xilinx.

Half a year ago, our customer bought Digilent ZYBO-Z7 set. The set includes an SDSoC software voucher. He entered the code on the Xilinx website and the code was accepted. Until then, everything is good. However, for an unspecified reason, he can only generate a NODE-Locked license, while the FLEX license button is blocked (i'm not sure if our customer isn't confuses FLEX with Float... but i can't simulate the problem on my site). The following instructions appear in the attached instructions: "NOTE: Voucher must be redeemed within one year of purchase". Therefore, I have the following questions:
1. Is the inability to generate a FLEX license due to exceeding this one-year deadline?
2. Since when does this annual period count?
3. Will the voucher become completely useless after exceeding the one-year deadline, ie it will be impossible to generate any license?

Thank You very much for help

 

[JColvin]

Hi @Wlodzimierzhepner,

My understanding is that all of the vouchers that Digilent has offered are all node-locked, so they will only be able to be installed on a single machine or dongle. I believe the FLEX licensing is just the name of the licensing service that Xilinx uses, based on the first FAQ listed in section 3 (FlexNet Licensing Overview) on Xilinx's page here. Ultimately, Xilinx will be the end authority on these answers since they created the vouchers (as opposed to Digilent generating and maintaining the vouchers), but here is my understanding of the answers to your questions:

1) I don't believe so, since I don't think you can generate a FLEX license button per se; I believe they would only be able to generate a node-locked license as we (Digilent) do not have any floating licenses available.

2 & 3) Having not used the SDSoC voucher myself, I don't know this for certain, but I think the one year timer starts when you provide the code to Xilinx and they accept it. I imagine you know this already, but for clarity's sake, after that point they will have one year to download any version of SDSoC that is available from Xilinx, including new versions that are released during that year. After that year is over, they will no longer be able to download a new version without purchasing access to it, though the last version that they did get will remain fully functional on their machine without any loss of features.

Please let me know if you have any other questions, though Xilinx will be able to provide a more accurate answer on the terms specific to their vouchers.

Thank you,
JColvin

[Wlodzimierzhepner]

Dear @JColvin,

thank you very much for the answer. It does clarify the situation.

 

EDIT:

Xilinx answered to my question as follows:

 

I believe the customer is referring to floating licenses when he says FLEX licenses.

1. Is the inability to generate a FLEX license due to exceeding this one-year deadline?

[N]: No, while purchasing, you must have purchased the Node-locked license. Hence, it is showing up as Node-locked license and not Floating license. The choice of node-locked or floating is only provided before the purchase. It cannot be interchanged unless it is an IP license. So in your case, he has to use the node-locked license.

2. Since when does this annual period count?

[N]: It starts from the data of generation of the license. If it was generated on 5 June 2018, the version limit will be 2019.06, which means you can use all SDSoC tools released on or before June 2019. More details here : https://www.xilinx.com/support/answers/33770.html

3. Will the voucher become completely useless after exceeding the one-year deadline, ie it will be impossible to generate any license?

[N]: No, the voucher is not useless after the one-year deadline. It is just that you will only be able to use SDSoC versions released before the deadline and for using any new version of software after the deadline, you would need a new license.