Digilent's Basys3 is an entry-level FPGA board designed exclusively for the Vivado Design Suite, featuring Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA architecture. Basys3 is the newest addition to the popular Basys line of starter FPGA boards. Basys3 includes the standard features found on all Basys boards: complete ready-to-use hardware, a large collection of on-board I/O devices, all required FPGA support circuits, and a free version of development tools, all at a student-level price point.

Now with the Basys3, Digilent gives students a better representation of professional-level engineering by improving the feature sets. These improvements include:

More I/O:

Double the user interface switches, double the number of onboard outputs, upgraded external ports (moving from 6-pin, single-row Pmods to 12-pin, double-row Pmods), and a USB-UART bridge.

Modern programming challenges:

Due to the migration from the Spartan 3E family to the Artix-7 class of device, the Basys3 offers a substantial increase in hardware capabilities. With the new Artix FPGA comes 15 times the logic cells (from 2,160 to 33,280) and the upgrade from multipliers to true DSP slices. It also adds over 26 times the amount of RAM.

Industry's first SOC-strength design suite:

The most significant change to the Basys3 is the upgrade to Xilinx Vivado Design Suite. Vivado Design Suite is the most modern design tool chain used by professional engineers worldwide. Vivado offers an improved user experience over ISE with expanded capabilities, such as block-based IP integration with Vivado IP Integrator, Vivado High-Level Synthesis (only available with Vivado System Edition) to reduce development time up to 10 times, and model-based DSP design integration with system generator for DSP.