I don't understand why there are, an Arty A7 and Nexys A7 - for FPGA training which is better ?

[scacka]

I don't understand why there are, an Arty A7 and Nexys A7 - for FPGA training which is better ?

Are both complete, that is is there any additional software costs, or any additional cost(s) to get either one to work ?

I need to purchase soon.

Thanks

Steve

[Mario875]

I would recommend you look at the respective reference sites below. Essentially the differences are the size of the FPGA on the boards (XC7A35T on the Arty vs XC7A100T on the Nexys) and the differences in IO on the boards….Nexys has VGA, Arty does not, Nexys has 16 switches, Arty has 4, Nexys has 8-digit 7-segment displays, Arty does not have 7-segment displays, Arty has been designed with headers that allow for Arduino shields to directly plug in, Nexys does not.

Which one to buy depends on what you want to do with it. The Nexys has more features, but it also costs more.

There are no additional software costs, you can download Vivado ML 2021.1 Standard Edition for free and use it with either board you mention.

https://reference.digilentinc.com/programmable-logic/arty-a7/start

https://reference.digilentinc.com/programmable-logic/nexys-a7/start

Edited August 3, 2021 by Mario875

[JColvin]

Hi @scacka,

Both boards are pretty well suited for general purpose "FPGA training", though without knowing what you are hoping to accomplish and your level of previous experience and budget it is hard to be able to recommend one board over another. You can take a look at the existing materials that Digilent has for each of these boards on their resource centers here and here. With regards to your second question though, neither board has any additional required software monetary costs; the Vivado software from Xilinx required to configure these boards is free to download and use.

There are a number of other Forum threads discussing what board people should start with linked below that you might find helpful:

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
JColvin