Comparison of Zynq boards

A good little entry level board with the smallest in the Zynq family.

• Has 6 x Pmod connectors which is great if you can satisfy your I/O needs with Pmods. The other options don’t offer so many Pmod connectors on their own.
• HDMI and audio is its advantage over the MicroZed.

Get the ZYBO if your application is video/audio and/or you want to take advantage of a few Digilent Pmod compatible devices.

Best low-cost board. Can be purchased with an I/O carrier card to extend the I/O options.

• More memory than the ZYBO.
• 2 x 50 I/O board-to-board connectors provides opportunity for interfacing with custom carrier boards.
• I/O expansion board available if you want to connect to multiple Pmod devices, add pushbuttons, DIP switches, LEDs, EEPROM, Xilinx XADC and clock oscillator.

The MicroZed, like the ZYBO, has a minimum of external hardware but the big I/O connectors make it adaptable to a huge number of applications. If the board gains popularity I can imagine that we’ll see more expansion boards for this come onto the market. I would have preferred to see the FMC connector used on this board, but apart from that I really like it and consider it the best low-cost board available. (Update: you can actually buy an FMC expansion carrier for the MicroZed).

Best value board in my opinion, with most of the features of the more expensive boards, the ZedBoard should satisfy a lot of Zynq applications.

• Low pin count FMC connector provides the ability to plug in any of the hundreds of off-the-shelf FMC cards for custom I/O options.
• Pmod headers for extra I/O.
• HDMI and audio connections.

The ZedBoard sits in the middle of the range in terms of price but it has great connectivity options, well worth it in my opinion.

Powerful board, comparable to the ZedBoard but it has the advantage of an extra LPC FMC and the XADC header.

• 2 x LPC FMC connectors provide more opportunities to get data in and out of the board, for example you could use an ADC on one, and a DAC on the other.
• XADC header allows you to take advantage of the Zynq’s internal low-speed ADC.

With respect to the ZedBoard, the ZC702 allows you to double your I/O options for twice the price, sounds fair enough.

For the high-end user who doesn’t want to be held back by a lack of resources.

• Largest in the Zynq family, lots of room to fit your design, because everyone knows that design optimization should be done at the end when the application is working.
• High pin count and low pin count FMC connectors provide the ability to plug in any of the hundreds of off-the-shelf FMC cards for custom I/O options.
• PCIe, great for those who need it.

The only board available with PCIe edge connector, so for some the choice will be easy. Otherwise, get this board if your application requires the highest performance, if you don’t yet know what resources your application needs and you don’t want to waste time optimizing code just to be able to fit into the device. Of course, the price is quite a big step up from the other boards, so you might be wasting your money if you don’t really need all the features. But it will make you feel good to have all that power!

A more powerful version of the MicroZed, this system-on-module carries the largest device in the Zynq family (either XC7Z045 or XC7Z100) and is designed to be easily integrated into your custom designs. It has two high bandwidth expansion connectors on the bottom of the board for interfacing with the standard baseboard or with your own carrier design. The expansion connectors provide access to 132 user I/O pins, including 8 GTX ports which enables the carrier design to support high-speed links such as PCIe, SATA, SFP and Gigabit Ethernet. The modular design concept allows you to easily make changes and upgrades to your product without taking much risk re-spinning the boards.

For those who want to play with the Zynq on an industry standard motherboard form-factor, here is the Zynq Mini-ITX. I can see this board replacing PC motherboards in applications that can benefit from hardware acceleration on the Zynq. All the connectivity options are covered on this board, obviously you’ve got everything you would get on a standard motherboard such as GigE, USB and PCIe but with the plus of a high-pin-count FMC. Buy the board as-is or get it with a case and hard drive, either way it comes with power supply, cables and an FMC adapter.