Xilinx/AMD: no more free Linux licenses

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Melkhior

Tinkerer
Jan 9, 2022
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Darn. No more lifelong licenses, it's all annualized now (so they can change the terms more easily I suppose), and the new free version is only on Windows not Linux.

https://www.amd.com/en/products/sof...ions.html#tabs-cbefba2790-item-c03136817a-tab

Well, I guess it's the end of the line for my Artix-7 base projects :-( Version 2025.2 will be enough to work with the current hardware, but not a lot of point in creating new hardware when the software support is gone.
 
M

Melkhior

Tinkerer
Jan 9, 2022
105
55
28
Trash80toG4 said:
It's all jibberish in friggin' Greek to me, could you explain evil intent and effects?
Click to expand...
Before, you could install the software from Xilinx/AMD to program many FPGAs (Spartan-7, most Artix-7, smallest Kintex-7, ...) with a lifelong, free license. Bigger FPGAs required a paid-for license.

The free license is now annual (so you can't use the software anymore if they remove the option), and only for Windows, it's not available on Linux anymore.

It sucks for hobbyists.
 
M

Melkhior

Tinkerer
Jan 9, 2022
105
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28
Trash80toG4 said:
Thanks for the explanation, that certainly does suck. Why would they remove Linux support, streamlining their development?
Click to expand...
Linux is still fully supported, but you need a paid-for license to use it (from version 2026.1 onward), so they don't save any money on development.

I presume they think they will make more money from the SW that way - they probably think people running Linux are pros that should pay. I think they're wrong (I'm not, and I don't think I'm the only one), and they wildly underestimate the value of the free tools to the core business of selling hardware. If you have great SW support for your hardware freely accessible, people will use (read: buy) your hardware. Otherwise, they're a lot more cautious and may look at alternatives solutions.

BTW, it happened to AMD with compilers & libraries on CPUs (had a very hard time in the HPC market for the couple of decades before Intel messed up their 10nm process), it happened to AMD with GPGPU programming (CUDA is the reason they lost that market almost entirely for a long time), you'd think AMD (the Xilinx part) would have figured out for the one market they're actually good at the SW they should try to stay ahead... but apparently no.
 
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