Digilent Nexys A7-100T: FPGA Trainer Board Recommended for ECE Curriculum

This board is exactly what it’s supposed to be… the Ethernet will have some limitations due to the type of phy they use, so selecting the right IP in Vivado is important if you’re using it with a MicroBlaze

(I just started using the board. I will update the review if I find anything wrong with it.) I've been using a Genesys 2 board for a couple of months for a project, but I wanted to get something smaller and cheaper. The Genesys 2 is too large to carry around, and it also requires an external power supply. This board is much smaller, and it is powered off USB. The cost is important because I do not want to carry a $1k FPGA board around, and I also want to be able to share my design with others who cannot afford the more expensive board. I really like the simplicity of this board. The Gensys 2 is a very powerful and flexible board, but that power comes at a cost: it requires an external power supply, and it is not supported by the free version of Vivado. I will continue using the Genesys 2 as my primary (desktop) development board, but I am also really excited to have this neat little board. The one thing I wish was improved: the VGA port really should support 16b color. RGB565 is a very common color format. RGB444 is a bit ugly. WIth the heatsink installed, the demo project brings the temperature up to 43C (measured by XADC on the chip), so I would recommend installing a heatsink. The attached picture shows this board next to the Genesys 2. Also, I think it's really amazing that I can order an FPGA board from Digilent off Amazon and have it arrive the next day.

Product met all requirements

The FPGA is fairly capable, and has the ports needed to implement a basic SBC or similar via a soft-core processor (without needing to connect up a bunch of stuff via PMod). The clock speeds it can achieve are pretty similar to those on the Arty boards and similar; I am able to get a CPU core running at 50MHz (or 100MHz with a fair bit of futzing). I am working on a prototype for a custom ISA/CPU of mine targeting this board, which is a 64-bit RISC style ISA with 3-execute lanes (explicitly parallel), and a double-precision FPU and MMU; also has enough Block-RAM to have 128K of L2 cache and 128K of video memory; ... One drawback though is that it has a smaller DDR RAM module than the Arty boards (128MB vs 256MB). Can also note that the "case" it comes with is essentially an extra-thick padded DVD holder (can be used to hold the board when not in use), rather than, say, something where one can mount the board and still have access to the ports and similar (kinda need something like this).

It’s exactly what it says it is. My warning for everyone, this is for people who know what they’re doing. What I mean about that is the box doesn’t come with instructions at all, doesn’t tell you what to download or any basics. It’s not hard to figure out, download Vivado and the datasheet is online, but it would be nice If it came with at least a link to that info

I would buy this board if it has SD card adaptor for boot loader.

Had to buy this for school project, but honestly this thing really shows the power and ability of FPGAs vs micro processors. Worth the investment if you want to gain a deeper understanding of logic design

Pretty much as expected, needed it for a class and it lasted the entire semester with no issues.

I typically prefer to order sensitive and expensive electronics directly from the supplier or from DigiKey but with exchange rates & duty fees making the cost a little outrageous, I took the chance ordering this on Amazon. I'm glad I did as it was almost $200 cheaper, the package arrived on time and undamaged. Thankfully, Digilent packages the board very well as it was sent in just a padded envelope. In terms of the board itself, it definitely meets the high standard one would expect from Digilent. Components are high quality and well-soldered, many options for peripherals, very versatile, and Digilent's online docs are solid. I look forward to learning more about RISC-V development with this board!