Programming the Hardware Device - 2025.2 English - UG908

Vivado Design Suite User Guide: Programming and Debugging (UG908)
Document ID
UG908
Release Date
2025-11-20
Version
2025.2 English

After the programming file is associated with the hardware device, program the hardware device by right-clicking on the device in the Hardware window and selecting the Program Device menu option. You can also use the program_hw_device Tcl command. For instance, to program the first device in the JTAG chain, use the following Tcl command:

program_hw_devices [lindex [get_hw_devices] 0]

After the progress dialog has indicated that the programming is 100% complete, check that the hardware device has been programmed successfully. You can do so by examining the DONE status in the Hardware Device Properties view.

Figure 1. Checking the DONE Status of a Device

You can also use the get_property Tcl command to check the DONE status. For instance, to check the DONE status of an AMD Kintex™ 7 device that is the first device in the JTAG chain, use the following Tcl command:

get_property REGISTER.IR.BIT5_DONE [lindex [get_hw_devices] 0]

On Versal devices, the command differs slightly because the DONE status register is different. Read Index 1 as the first device returned by get_hw_devices and be the arm_dap in a single device use case.

get_property REGISTER.JTAG_STATUS.BIT[34]_DONE [lindex [get_hw_devices] 1]

If you use another means to program the hardware device (for instance, a flash device or external device programmer), you can also refresh the status of a hardware device. You can do so by right-clicking the Refresh Device menu option or by running the refresh_hw_device Tcl command. This refreshes the various properties for the device, including but not limited to the DONE status.

Important: For non-Versal architectures, if your design contains debug cores, ensure that the JTAG clock is 2.5 times slower than the debug hub clock.
Important: User SCAN Chain: For non-Versal architectures, Vivado Programmer tries to detect debug cores on the user scan chain specified in the design by default. It does the detection by issuing a JTAG_CHAIN 1 command to the device. If you have programmed a device with a design with zero debug cores or a debug core with a user scan chain of 2, 3, or 4, you see a warning.

To determine the user scan chain setting, for non-Versal architectures, open the implemented design and use:

get_property C_USER_SCAN_CHAIN [get_debug_cores dbg_hub]
You can change the user scan chain used in the Vivado Hardware Manager.
Note: The BSCAN_SWITCH_USER_MASK is a bit mask value. See the following figure.

Alternatively, you can specify the user scan chain value as an option to hw_server start-up.

hw_server -e "set bscan-switch-user-mask <user-bit-mask>"
Figure 2. BSCAN Switch User Mask

Tip: For designs prior to Vivado 2016.3 AMD recommends manually launching hw_server with -e "set xsdb-user-bscan <C_USER_SCAN_CHAIN scan_chain_number>" to detect the debug hub at User Scan Chain of 2 or 4.