AMD (Xilinx) is Excluding Linux From the Free Tier For Its FPGA Dev Tool

Long-time Slashdot reader Sun writes: AMD has announced a change to the way they are licensing Vivado, their FPGA development tool... Hidden between the lines of the announcement [of a new model starting with the 2026.1 release] is the change to the free of charge tier. AMD is adding more devices to be supported in this tier, which is supposedly the carrot. The stick, however, is the removal of certain debug features.

The thing that's likely to hit the hobbist community the worst, however, is that the free tier will now not be available on Linux.

AMD are saying that old licenses are still in effect, so it appears that if you hurry to install Vivado now, you'd still be able to use it moving forward. It is not clear, however, whether it'll still be possible to install Vivado 2025.2 after Vivado 2026.1 becomes available.
"Almost all our surveys show... close to 70% of the customers are still using Windows," explained AMD senior product application engineer Anatoli Curran on the tool's support forum. "Vivado ML Standard Edition v2025.2 is going to be officially supported (I mean if there are any bugs found, these can be fixed) until v2026.3 release... Any release older than the current 3 released versions of Vivado then becomes unsupported (meaning no bugs will be fixed with Vivado Standard Edition v2025.2 after Vivado v2026.3).

"However, users can continue using V2025.2 forever, if they wish to do so... Also, Vivado ML Standard Edition v2025.2 is license-free... Users only need to obtain and use any IP Core related licenses, or Vivado Model Composer (for SysGen)."

Hold my beer and watch this!

[Pezbian]

"Hi! I'm AMD Knoxville! Welcome to Jackass!"
*Minutemen - Corona (Jackass opening theme) ensues*

Keeping free tier internal costs lower ...

[drnb]

The thing that's likely to hit the hobbist community the worst, however, is that the free tier will now not be available on Linux.

It seems they want to keep the internal costs of the free tier as low as possible. Supported OS of all paid tiers:
Windows: 10, 11
Linux: Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu, Alma, Rocky
macOS: none

Given the amount of dual booting, I'm not sure the hobbyist community will be hit that hard.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

There are good alternatives too now, like GOWIN. I know it's not always an option, you might need Xilinx features, you might be familiar with them already, but I find it's often worth the effort to move if you can.

Re:

[CommunityMember]

Given the amount of dual booting, I'm not sure the hobbyist community will be hit that hard.

Not everyone chooses (or wants) to dual boot (some do not even have a Windows license). Perhaps AMD wants to push Linux FPGA hobbyists towards Altera (where, last I knew, the starter (lite) development tools were still available for free for Linux). For both Xilinx and Altera the more advanced tooling capabilities do require additional license fees, but not everyone requires those types of capabilities.

Re:

[drnb]

I'm not sure 'want' ever had much to do with dual booting. It was (is) a necessity for gaming. Free Xilinx just adds a new necessity. The Linux community has been there, done that, wrt to such necessities. Choosing to abstain was usually the less common choice.

Re:

[crunchy_one]

There is an alternative to dual booting: virtualization. When I need Vivado, I run it under ARM Windows 11 in a virtual machine on an M4 Mac. Yes, I know that Vivado is an x64 app. The installation was a little bumpy, but it runs well enough under Windows x64 emulation (Prism) for my purposes. The virtualization software I use, Parallels, has excellent filesystem integration, so my development files aren't "trapped" inside the Windows 11 virtual machine. As an added bonus, I turn off networking for the Wind

Re:

[Sun]

If you develop a mixed software-hardware solution, you may need to run on Linux, as that's where (realistically) the development tools for the rest of the project are.

Re:

[dargaud]

Do people actually double-boot ? I tried it in the early 2000 to try Linux out, but once you have your tools setup on one OS, you are reluctant to reboot and break all your workflow. Running the lesser OS in a VM is the way to go and has been for a long time.

Re: Keeping free tier internal costs lower ...

[toutankh]

I thin one reason for dual boot used to be "Windows for games, Linux for everything else" but wine and proton have made that reason disappear.

Re: Keeping free tier internal costs lower ...

[dj245]

Indeed, it has reversed in some cases. I have a laptop which boots Bazzite by default but has windows on a separate partition for office stuff.

Re:

[drnb]

Mostly games and rare highly specialized software that you want to run natively on the hardware.

People mention wine but it's iffy. You are somewhat limited to what's popular with wine developers and gets patched quickly.

For "desktop" Linux use, WSL is becoming increasingly important. You get Linux on the Windows desktop. Linux apps running seamlessly on the same desktop as commercial apps not available under windows.

Not a problem

[MeNeXT]

The reason I choose hardware is that they support open source. No or unfavourable support means I won't even consider it even if it's intended to run Windows.

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Then again, how many projects use Xilinx parts?

Most FPGA projects are using Intel/Altera parts - MiSTer, etc.

Re:

[dargaud]

Well, speaking for myself, I've always used Xilinx for my embedded OS related projects, but the choice was actually done by the hardware guys.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Then again, how many projects use Xilinx parts?

Most FPGA projects are using Intel/Altera parts - MiSTer, etc.

Err no, objectively not. Xilinx has more than 50% market share across the entire FPGA market. Intel/Altera are sub 30%

Re:

[Sun]

I think the most FOSS friendly today is Lattice. I'm a little sorry I didn't go with them from the start.

The thing that's likely to hit ...

[Anne Thwacks]

... is European startups.

Europe is Dumping Windows as fast as it can - on security grounds. Europe does not have the American funding model, and many start-ups are individuals with no significant funding.

I have developed many Xilinx projects, and failed to develop many more because I could not afford the development software. Including military applications that could have run to very high volume. At that time, there were no realistic alternatives.

Re: The thing that's likely to hit ...

[Fons_de_spons]

EU here... We have been here before. It did not go well.
Worked in a company that had Linux machines, drivers were really an issue back then. Everything worked. But then someone's PC failed and was renewed. That machine mysteriously went black at random moments. After a while, every machine had its own quirks. IT did not have the resources to fix so many different things. They switched to Mac. It may have improved. This was more than a decade ago.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

They switched to Mac, not Hackintosh.

If the company were serious they'd buy supported hardware from System76, Framework, Dell, Lenovo, local shop, whomever.

It is true that buying an untested Windows machine and expecting full Linux support on a traditional distro, isn't guaranteed to work.

A rolling Arch or Gentoo might do better, buy why not get the tested ones? Employee time really isn't worth saving a day's wages on a hardware promp discount.

Dumb move

[dskoll]

That's a really dumb move. The higher-end Xilinx chips that have embedded ARM cores almost universally run software built on Petalinux (based on Yocto) and that AFAIK requires a Linux development machine. So why would you drop Linux support for Vivado?

But why?? They make money from hardware

[joe_frisch]

If they are going to maintain a Linux version of vivado in a paid tier, why drop it for the free tier since they already have the support costs? I assume they make money by selling hardware, so why would they want to drive away any of their customers?