Apple Silicon users will not be able to natively run Vivado, however it is needed by Alchitry Lab IDE to compile your Lucid code into FPGA binary (to be flashed onto your FPGA development board). ****There are several solutions offered online as of Jan 2024:
Option 1: tested on M2 Max Mac Studio (32GB RAM), took too long to even run Alchitry Lab IDE, and type a few words. Extreme lag, about 1s latency per keystroke.
Option 2: best option for now, but pretty involved to set up, and it’s not free (but significantly cheaper than having to buy another laptop). Estimated cost at about $10/month.
<aside> 💡 This guide is written to give you an idea on how to set up EC2 instance and then install Alchitry Labs + Vivado on it. It is pretty involved.
Estimated time taken: 2 hours
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Before your proceed, please ensure that your macOS is running version Ventura 13.5 or above. You won’t be able to run Alchitry Lab Loader V2 otherwise.
You will be compiling the binary for your FPGA board remotely in your EC2 instance, then transfer it to your mac. Your mac will then load the binary to your FPGA. To do this, you need to download AlchitryLabsV2 2.0.2 ****to your mac (or local computer, if you’re reading this guide because you don’t have space in your local computer).