This spring, en route to bringing GRVI Phalanx to Amazon AWS EC2 F1, I had to develop new AXI4 Stream and AXI4 Memory Mapped interface bridges to GRVI Phalanx. Both the Xilinx IP catalog and the F1 shell extensively use AXI4 interfaces.

Fortunately for me it was also time to try out the terrific Pynq (Python on Zynq) development platform and its first board, Digilent PYNQ-Z1. (Just $65 academic!) Pynq is a brilliant synthesis of the Zynq FPGA-SOC, Ubuntu Linux for Zynq, Python, the massive Python library ecology, Jupyter notebooks, and new Python classes, IP, and software for bridging the Python world and the programmable logic fabric world.

I expected Pynq and its browser-hosted Jupyter notebooks interface would be apt for learning and teaching modern FPGAs and FPGA applications, for documenting and sharing work. I hadn’t expected that Pynq would also be a high productivity tool for experienced FPGA designers to more raplidly explore, evaluate, discover, and play. Using Pynq to explore, develop, prototype saved me weeks of effort. It was particularly good for interactively writing tests and exploring new hardware corner cases in Python with <1 second turnaround.

Back in May I attended Pynq training presented by Xilinx’s Patrick Lysaght at FCCM 2017. In the morning session I put together this My Pynq experience slide deck (PDF) and Patrick was kind enough to let me present it as the impromptu lunch entertainment.

I know I have only scratched the surface of the Pynq platform, and I am fascinated by, and look forward to, the idea of delivering “Live, Runs Interactively in Hardware, Live User’s Guides” of my work as Jupyter notebooks.

Idea: The two platforms I am focusing upon this year are Pynq / PYNQ-Z1 and AWS EC2 F1, it would be wonderful to see a port of Pynq to F1, so I can also provide Live User’s Guides on F1.

Fellow FPGA designers, try Pynq. You’ll like it. Pynq makes exploring new FPGA ideas lightweight, fresh, fast, easy, fun again.

Thank you Patrick, Cathal McCabe, and team for bringing us an unanticipated but essential new tool.