Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA Trainer Board: Recommended for Introductory Users

The Basys 3 is an entry-level FPGA development board designed exclusively for Vivado Design Suite, featuring Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA architecture. Basys 3 is the newest addition to the popular Basys line of FPGA development boards, and is perfectly suited for students or beginners just getting started with FPGA technology. The Basys 3 includes the standard features found on all Basys boards: complete ready-to-use hardware, a large collection of on-board I/O devices, all required FPGA support circuits, a free version of development tools, and at a student-level price point.

Note:

The Basys 3 does not ship with a USB cable.

If you would like an evaluation board for academic purposes, you can apply for a donation through the Xilinx University Program.

Digilent provides students with a better representation of professional-level engineering by greatly improving the Basys feature sets. These improvements include:

• More I/O:

Double the user interface switches, double the number of onboard outputs, upgraded the number of external ports (moving from 6-pin single-row Pmods to 12-pin double-row Pmods) and included for the first time on a Basys class device a USB-UART bridge.

• Modern Architecture and Modern Programming Challenges:

Due to the migration from the Spartan-3E family to the Artix-7 class of device, the Basys 3 offers a substantial increase in hardware capabilities. With the new Artix FPGA comes 15X the logic cells (from 2,160 to 33,280) and the upgrade from multipliers to true DSP slices. It also adds over 26X the amount of RAM.

• Industry's First SoC Strength Design Suite:

The most significant change to the Basys 3 is the upgrade to Xilinx Vivado Design Suite (WebPACK edition available for free download from Xilinx), the most modern design tool chain used by professional engineers worldwide. Compared to ISE^®, Vivado offers an improved user experience and expanded capabilities. These capabilities include block-based IP integration (which can reduce development time up to 10x) and the Vivado Logic/Serial I/O analyzer*.

Stats:

Device/IC: Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA (XC7A35T-1CPG236C)

Connector(s):

• USB A
• USB micro-B
• Four 12-pin Pmod ports
• VGA

Programming: Designed exclusively for the Vivado Design Suite

Features:

• Features the Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA: XC7A35T-1CPG236C
• 33,280 logic cells in 5200 slices (each slice contains four 6-input LUTs and 8 flip-flops)
• 1,800 Kbits of fast block RAM
• Five clock management tiles, each with a phase-locked loop (PLL)
• 90 DSP slices
• Internal clock speeds exceeding 450 MHz
• On-chip analog-to-digital converter (XADC)
• Digilent USB-JTAG port for FPGA programming and communication
• Designed Exclusively for Vivado Design Suite (Vivado Design Suite WebPACK edition can be downloaded for free from Xilinx). Expanded features are available through purchase of the Design Edition.
• Free WebPACK™ download for standard use.
• Micro-B USB cable not included.
• Serial Flash
• USB-UART Bridge
• 12-bit VGA output
• USB HID Host for mice, keyboards and memory sticks
• 16 user switches
• 16 user LEDs
• 5 user pushbuttons
• 4-digit 7-segment display
• 4 Pmod ports: 3 Standard 12-pin Pmod ports, 1 dual purpose XADC signal / standard Pmod port

What's Included:

• Basys 3 FPGA development board
• Custom Digilent cardboard box with protective foam
• The Basys 3 does not include a USB cable

Support Materials:

Datasheet (PDF)

Schematics (PDF)

For all other material:

Resource Center

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