Board and tool version updates coming to FINN

[auphelia]

We are about to merge a large set of changes from dev into main. Alongside many new features, this update refreshes the boards and Xilinx tool versions that FINN officially supports. This post is a heads-up for the community on what is changing, why, and how to keep targeting older boards if you still need them.

Status: These changes currently live on dev and will be merged into main soon. If you want to try them before the merge, check out the dev branch.

Updated Xilinx tool support

The XRT version installed in the FINN Docker container has been updated and is now compatible with 2024.2.

• Recommended: Vivado/Vitis 2024.2. This is the version we continuously test against, so it is the safest choice for reproducing our CI results.
• 2025.1 and 2025.2 should also work fine. We do not test them on every change, but we are not aware of blocking issues.
• The FINN build flow includes configuration checks that will emit an informational note if you use a version other than the recommended ones, so you will know when you are off the tested path.

One exception worth noting: the Slash shell flow (for Versal-based Alveo cards such as the V80) requires Vivado 2025.1 or later.

Board support changes

To keep the officially supported and tested board set manageable, we are retiring a few targets and pointing users to recommended replacements:

Retired board	Recommended replacement
Pynq-Z1 / Pynq-Z2	AUP-ZU3_8GB (Zynq UltraScale+)
Alveo U280	Alveo U55C

The retirement of the Pynq-Z1 and Pynq-Z2 boards follows the upstream PYNQ project, which has announced the end of support for these boards. See the PYNQ discussion for context: Xilinx/PYNQ#1549.

You can still use the retired boards

Retiring a board means we no longer test it in CI and no longer recommend it as a default target — not that FINN can no longer generate designs for it. If you still rely on these boards, you have two options:

1. Use an older FINN release that still shipped these boards as supported targets and its matching tool version.
2. Re-enable the board in the current FINN with a small change:
   • Pynq-Z1 / Pynq-Z2: The build flow itself is unchanged and Vivado 2024.2 still supports the xc7z020 part. You can re-enable these boards by removing them from retired_pynq_boards in finn.util.basic.
   • Alveo U280: Support was dropped with the move to Vitis 2024.2. To keep using it, build with Vitis 2022.2, install the matching older XRT version in the Docker container, and re-add its part/platform entries to vitis_part_map / vitis_default_platform in finn.util.basic, along with the matching Platform class in finn.util.platforms.

If you re-enable a board this way, please note that it is on the unsupported path, the flow should work, but it is no longer covered by our automated testing.

Questions

If you have questions about the new tool versions or board changes, the GitHub Discussions page is the best place to ask.