Efinity Software Installation Guide - jungle-elec/FireAnt GitHub Wiki

• Hardware and Software Requirement
• Download Required Software
• Installation
  • Windows
  • USB Driver Installation (for windows)
  • Linux (Ubuntu / CentOS)
• Add Path to simulator (optional)
• What's next?

• Dual-core 64-bit Processor

• 16GB RAM

• Windows Environment

  • Windows 7 or later (64-bit)
  • Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 x64 runtime library
  • Python 3 (64-bit)

• Linux Environment

  • Supported OS:
    • Ubuntu x86_64 v14.04 or later
    • Red Hat Enterprise x86_64 v6 or later
    • CentOS x86_64 v6 or later
  • Linux X11 Windowing System (for Efinity GUI)
  • Udev Device Manager (for Efinix USB Programming)

• Simulator (Optional):

  • Cadence Incisive Enterprise Simulator (ncsim)
  • Mentor Graphics ModelSim Simulator
  • iVerlog

Each FireAnt owner will be provided an user account on Efinix Support Center for downloading Efinity Software, datasheets, manuals and other support documents. The login has Forget Password support if the user enters the wrong password. If you encounter any login issue, please contact [email protected].

Make sure your have Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 x64 runtime library installed in your system before installing Efinity Software. After downloading the Efinity Software installer package, double-clicking on the package's icon to run the installer.

Click "Next" to proceed.

Tick the checkbox for "I accept the terms in the License Agreement", then click "Next".

Keeping the default installation path is preferred and make sure you have enough disk space. Then click "Next".

Press the "Install" button to begin. The installation process may take 2-3 minutes.

After the installation process. Click "Finish" to close the installer.

Next step is to install USB Driver. Please noted that FireAnt uses FTDI FT232H USB transceiver to download bitstream for FPGA. The original FTDI driver (or Windows default driver) CANNOT be recognized by Efinity Programmer.

To run the Efinity tools from command line scripting interface, environment variables must be setup. Run the following command in the shell environment. (i.e. Windows PowerShell: Press WinKey and X together, then choose Windows Powershell (Admin))

C:\Efinity\2018.4\bin\setup.bat

Note that this will also update the local PATH variable to include the Efinity tools directory.

The Efinity Programmer recommends using Zadig software to install libusbK. Download appropriate Zadig below:

https://zadig.akeo.ie/downloads/

In this example, we choose zadig-2.4.exe

Before running the tool, make sure only the FireAnt is connected and unplug all other FTDI devices from your PC. This would prevent you from replacing driver for unwanted device accidentally. Now double-click Zadig-2.4.exe in your download directory to execute the Zadig tool.

In the menu of Zadig tool, Choose "Options > List All Devices".

Basically, windows will prepare the default FTDI driver when you plug-in the FireAnt. Therefore, try to look for the device with driver equal to FTDIBUS and USB ID equal to 0403 6014. (WARNING: replacing wrong driver for other USB devices would cause malfunction of corresponding devices) Next, click the up/down arrows to select libusbK driver as shown below and click Replace Driver to execute.

Now open the Efinity desktop icon to start Efinity Software.

In the interface of IDE. Locate and click on the Efinity Programmer icon as shown below:

The target device should be seen in the drop-down box already.

In this example, the device name is Single RS232-HS

Simply unzip/untar the efinity package into a suitable user directory.

tar -xjvf efinity-<version>.tar.bz2

To use the Efinity Programmer, install the included USB UDEV device manager. (i.e. /etc/udev/rules.d/...) Run the following command with root privilege:

sudo ./bin/install_usb_driver.sh

Run the following script to install a shortcut in Desktop directory. (i.e. ~/Desktop)

./bin/install_desktop.sh

To run the Efinity tools from command line scripting interface, environment variables must be setup. Go to your Efinity install directory and run the following command in the terminal console.

source bin/setup.sh

Note that this will also update the local PATH variable to include the Efinity tools directory.

The following simulators have been verified to be compatible to Efinity Software generated Verilog netlist files. They are:

• Incisive Enterprise Simulator®. Incisive has robust Verilog language support as well as excellent simulation runtime. See Cadence documention for details.
• QuestaSim®. QuestaSim has robust Verilog language support as well as the best simulation runtime. See Mentor Graphics documention for details.
• iVerilog. For small designs or prototyping, this free open-source utility may fit your needs. iVerilog is available in Ubuntu, CentOS, and other Linux repositories, or freely downloadable from the web. Windows versions can be downloaded from http://bleyer.org/icarus/

Note that these simulators not explicitly integrated with Efinity Software. To simulate a post-synthesis Verilog netlist, include the following library path as a resource in the 3rd party simulator:

<Efinity top-level path>/sim_models/verilog

The installation is now completed. You can try Connecting the FireAnt or Create your own Project