Honored Contributor
Honored ContributorHello,
Just to make sure there's no confusion here: xillinux (http://xillybus.com/xillinux) is a full Linux distribution, including a few extra IP cores, which the end user may choose to license, if they are used for commercial purposes. There are other Linux distributions out there as well, and I guess each one makes his or her choice of taste. Since Linux itself is free software, those who choose not to use Xillbus' IP cores have no licensing issues whatsoever. Indeed, the xillybus lite ip core (http://xillybus.com/xillybus-lite) is quite basic, but it allows setting and reading registers on the FPGA side, not needing to deal with hardware buses, setting up Qsys, the device tree, kernel programming etc. And it has a no-fee license no matter what. The "full" xillybus ip core (http://xillybus.com/doc/xilinx-pcie-principle-of-operation), which is intended for data transport, has a no-fee license for academic use. Companies may evaluate it at no cost, including integration in their own products. The license fee is required only when the company wants to start making profit from a product including the core. It may appear high, but it's in line with the real-life development costs of getting a reliable data transport between the FPGA and HPS. The advantage is saving time and risks. As for how many takers there are, it's a bit difficult to tell by the number of downloads, which currently stands at ~100/month, after announcing the project at Rocketboards in the beginning of this month. I suppose time will tell... Regards, Eli
