What You'll Getīesides ISE there's a few other tools that you'll need and/or want for your FPGA development environment. It keeps everything contained and separate from the rest of your work and with the script I'll be describing in this post it really is very easy to setup - despite the apparently long list of steps.Īlso, even if you do get ISE running on Windows, I find that GHDL/GtkWave and some other tools work better under Linux anyway. My recommendation here is to setup a dedicated VM specifically for Xilinx development. Xilinx do have what they call their Windows 10 version of ISE, but it's just a virtual Linux machine with ISE pre-installed on it. The latest version of the Xilinx development tools don't support the Spartan 6 and earlier FPGAs so you need to use the prior version those tools - ISE 14.7 and that only works on Linux and older versions of Windows. The first thing I'll suggest is that Linux is the only real option here. This guide, along with setup script I've written aim to make this a little easier - and as a bonus it can also optionally install and configure a range of other handy programs and utilities that'll help with your FPGA development process. Unfortunately setting up a development environment for the Spartan 6 isn't a straight-forward process. It's been around for about 10 years and Xilinx has committed to making the chip available for at least another 10 years. The Xilinx Spartan 6 is a popular FPGA used in many development boards like the Mimas V2, the Papilio Duo and many others.

How to download xilinx ise software