Xliinx/AMD: no more free Linux licenses...

[Melkhior]

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.

 

[paws]

What a weird decision.

 

[Phipli]

It was bad enough as was - the amount of effort with signups and agreements and the pure size of the installs meaning I had to keep deleting them to get space back were part of what held me back learning FPGA stuff for both main manufacturers.

Guess that they have no interest in home users, which is sort of fair enough, except that once in a while, playing at home is where a big product comes from. I have no doubt that Arduinos drive decades of AVR sales.

 

[Melkhior]

Guess that they have no interest in home users, which is sort of fair enough, except that once in a while, playing at home is where a big product comes from. I have no doubt that Arduinos drive decades of AVR sales.

Yes, it's very short-sighted. Having really great support for your FPGA freely accessible to those who won't/can't pay is a great way to lock-in mindshare and expertise.

Hobbyists, students, small companies were using those licenses. Without them, people are going to look at alternatives, including boosting support for open-source tools. Which will help their competitors using those tools as part of their toolchains, and so lowering the barrier of entry for new players - including many of those based in China.

It's probably good for open-source tools eventually (and therefore everyone long-term), but I can't understand what idiotic money-saving rational Xilinx/AMD has to do this stupid of a move... You'd think no-one at AMD noticed that CUDA is why people buy truckloads (literally these days) of NVidia GPU, and that CUDA is free from day one because NVidia was smart enough to realize it's just necessary NRE to help the primary business, selling hardware.