You will be required to apply through Hackster.io. (By registering with Hackster.IO for the Xilinx Adaptive Compute Acceleration Contest, you hereby agree to Xilinx’s Official Contest Rules). In the event that the Hackster IO application process requires you to accept or otherwise agree to any Contest rules, guidelines, policies are other terms and conditions (“Hackster IO Rules”), then you hereby acknowledge and agree that Xilinx shall be deemed a third party beneficiary of your Hackster IO Rules and affirm to Xilinx that you shall strictly comply with all Hackster IO Rules as well as these Contest Rules.  As between you and Xilinx, these Contest Rules shall govern and control and prevail over any conflict between and the Hackster IO Rules and these Contest Rules.

Each entry will be judged by a committee of distinguished Xilinx employees across the following Xilinx functional organizations: Engineering, Technical Marketing, Worldwide Technical Support, and Product Marketing.  Each member of the committee will judge each entry and assign a numerical score based on the criteria below, which may be to the tenth or even hundredth decimal place.  The average score will be calculated among all committee members, and all entries will be ranked by average score.  In the event of a tie between any eligible entries, an additional judge will break the tie based on the judging criteria described below. The decisions of the judges are final and binding.  The criteria is as follows:

Project Documentation (30 points)
Story/Instructions - Show how you created your project, including images, screenshots, and/or a video demonstration of your solution working as intended. Ask yourself: “If I were a beginner reading this project, would I understand how to recreate it?”

Complete BOM (10 points)
Detail the hardware, software and/or tools used.

Code & Contribution (30 points)
Include working code with helpful comments.

Creativity (30 points)
Your idea doesn’t have to be original, but it should be creative (a fresh take on an old idea is often worth as much as a brand new idea)

You grant Xilinx an irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide right and license to use, review, assess, test and otherwise analyze your entry and all its content in connection with this Contest.   If Xilinx does not receive a sufficient number of entries meeting the entry requirements, Xilinx may select fewer winners than the number of Contest prizes described in Section 5 of the contest rules.  

For our Developer track, we have 20 available loaner boards.  Participants can apply for an Alveo U50 Accelerator Card  by submitting their design proposal along with a hardware application through Hackster.io. (See full details in the contest rules).

Once you submit your contest application on Hackster.io, you can use the Loaner Board request form on Xilinx.com.

The Xilinx Adaptive Computing Contest is open for project entries from Tuesday, July 7, 2020 from 12:01 am (Pacific Time) to Saturday, November 14, 2020 at 11:59 PM (Pacific Time). If you would like to apply for your chance to receive a free loan of Xilinx Hardware platform, you must submit your application along with a detailed proposal of your project before Friday, August 14 at 11:59 PM (Pacific Time). On or around August 19, 2020 at 11:59 PM (Pacific Time), Xilinx will ship the available Hardware to the individuals or teams whose proposals were accepted.

If you received a free or loaner hardware and are unable to submit a project, please contact us at contests@hackster.io and let us know as soon as possible. Hardware must be sent back to Xilinx.  

For the developer track Alveo U50 Accelerator Card, Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC ZCU104 Evaluation Kit, Ultra96-V2 Development Board are required. 

The developer track has 3 categories based on 3 different platforms.

• Intelligent Video Analytics: Using a Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC ZCU104 Evaluation Kit, combined with Xilinx Vitis and Vitis AI to build an intelligent video analytics solution for smart city, smart retail, ADAS, robotics vision, medical imaging and many other applications.  
• Adaptable Compute Acceleration: Using an Alveo U50 Accelerator Card, combined with Xilinx Vitis and Vitis AI to implement hardware acceleration of challenging workloads, including but not limited to financial computing, machine learning, computational storage, and data search and analytics.
• Adaptive Intelligence of Things:  Using an Avnet Ultra96-V2 Development Board, combined with Xilinx Vitis and Vitis AI to build any application that shows the best use of hardware acceleration with programmable logic.

Please visit the following forums for technical support.

• Vitis Forum - https://forums.xilinx.com/t5/Vitis-Acceleration-SDAccel-SDSoC/bd-p/tools_v
• Vitis AI Forum - https://forums.xilinx.com/t5/AI-and-Vitis-AI/bd-p/AI
• Alveo Forum - https://forums.xilinx.com/t5/Alveo-Accelerator-Cards/bd-p/alveo
• HLS Forum - https://forums.xilinx.com/t5/High-Level-Synthesis-HLS/bd-p/hls

After August 14^th, you will be notified of upcoming webinars to help you with development. You can also find additional tutorials, webinars, and documentation under the Vitis getting started tab. 

No. You may only apply and compete in one of the three categories.

You can find the full developer contest description here. 

General Requirements

• You and every member of your team must be registered as an eligible participant in this Contest. Full eligibility rules are described in Section 4 of the contest rules.
• Your entry must be your own original work.  See Section 4 of the contest rules for further information.
• Your entry cannot have been selected as a winner in any other Hackster.io contest.
• Your team may not have more than 5 individual members per entry.  By submitting a project to this Contest on behalf of a team, you must acknowledge that you are the designated representative authorized to act on behalf of your team.  See Section 4 of the contest rules for further details.
• Hardware Loan Application Requirements
  • Note: If you choose to apply for a Hardware loan, you must meet the following requirements. If not, continue to 'Hardware/Software Build Requirements' below.
• Your hardware application must be submitted via the online application form found on Hackster.io.
• Your hardware application must be written in English.
• Your hardware application must use, as applicable to the corresponding Contest category, the Alveo U50 Accelerator Card, Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC ZCU104 Evaluation Kit, or Ultra96-V2 Development Board.
• Your hardware application must solve a problem related to the Adaptive Computing contest. (Intelligent Video Analytics, Adaptable Compute Acceleration, or Adaptive Intelligence of Things).

Hardware/Software Build Requirements

• Your project must be created using, as applicable to the corresponding Contest category, the Alveo U50 Accelerator Card, Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC ZCU104 Evaluation Kit, or Ultra96-V2 Development Board.
• Your project must be created using Xilinx Vitis, Vitis AI, or both.
• Your project must solve a problem related to one of the three categories associated with the contest (Intelligent Video Analytics, Adaptable Compute Acceleration, or Adaptive Intelligence of Things).

Project Code & Documentation Requirements

• Your project must include a project name, short project description, cover image, bill of materials (BOM), full instructions, images, and relevant resource files (schematics, code, CAD).
• Your project must include example software code posted to GitHub.
• All code must be published to a public code repository on GitHub licensed under the open-source 3-Clause BSD License.
• You must notify contests@hackster.io of your GitHub account or the repo of your submission.
• Your project must be written in English.
• Your project must be submitted by Nov 15th, 2020.

To be eligible to compete in the developer contest, you must represent and certify to Xilinx, Inc. (“Xilinx”) that you are not a resident of any Xilinx Restricted Country (see full contest details), that you are not on any sanctioned or restricted list published by any governmental agency or the United Nations, that you are 18 years or older as of the date of entry into the Xilinx Adaptive Computing Competition (the “Contest”), that you are not an employee, contractor, vendor, distributor, representative, alliance program member, or family member (defined as an immediate family member and/or persons living in the same household as the winner) of an employee or affiliated party of Xilinx, including but not limited to Xilinx’s subsidiaries, distributors, or sales representatives, its advertising or promotion agencies, parent companies, agents, officers, subsidiaries, service providers or affiliates, or any other person or entity directly associated with the Contest) (the “Contest Entities”), that you are the designated representative authorized to act on behalf of your team (if you submitted an entry on behalf of a team), that your entire entry only includes material (including hardware, source code – both open source and third party sourced, user interface, video or images) that you own or that you have permission to use such material from the owner of the intellectual property rights associated with such material, that your entry does not include copyrighted materials (such as source code, user interface, video or images) unless you own or have permission to use the materials, that the work you will and do submit to the Contest does not infringe or misappropriate the intellectual property rights of any other person or entity, that you acknowledge and agree that any work product, invention, software, code, design files, or other intellectual property associated with the work that you will an do submit to the Contest shall be released in source code form (or other human readable format) on a public Github website under the OSI-approved BSD 3-Clause open source license, and that you have returned the Hardware (as defined in the Rules) to Xilinx in its original packaging and in the same condition in which you received such Hardware.  Employees of Xilinx, Inc., Xilinx subsidiaries, Xilinx distributors, and Xilinx sales representatives, as well as those involved in the development, production, implementation and distribution of this Contest, and their advertising or promotion agencies, parent companies, agents, officers, subsidiaries, service providers and affiliates, and any other persons or entities directly associated with this Contest ("Contest Entities") and members of the immediate families and/or persons living in the same household as such persons are ineligible to enter the Contest or win the prize.  If you are employed by a company that is not a Contest Entity but that buys from, sells to, competes with, or otherwise, does business with Xilinx or is in similar industry as Xilinx, you have the sole responsibility to review and understand their employer’s policies regarding employee eligibility to participate in this Contest.  If you are participating in violation of your employer’s policies, you may be disqualified from this Contest and from receiving the prize.  Xilinx disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for disputes arising between an employee and their employer related to this matter.  

By submitting your entry to this Contest, you understand and acknowledge (i) that Xilinx may have developed or commissioned materials similar or identical to your submission and you waive any claims you may have resulting from any similarities to your entry, (ii) that after the submission deadline has passed, any project that has been submitted to the Contest cannot be deleted or made private and will remain on the Contest page after the Contest has concluded, (iii) that Xilinx at its sole discretion has the right to remove any information or code submitted in the entry to address compliance with any applicable laws, address any of the restrictions described herein, or for editorial or other purposes deemed necessary, and you agree to sign any documentation necessary for Xilinx or its agents to make use of the foregoing rights.

To apply for the startup contest, fill out the registration form found here.

Each entry will be judged by a committee of distinguished Xilinx employees across the following Xilinx functional organizations: Engineering, Technical Marketing, Worldwide Technical Support, and Product Marketing.  Each member of the committee will judge each entry and assign a numerical score based on the criteria below, which may be to the tenth or even hundredth decimal place.  The average score will be calculated among all committee members, and all entries will be ranked by average score.  In the event of a tie between any eligible entries, an additional judge will break the tie based on the judging criteria described below. The decisions of the judges are final and binding.  The criteria is as follows:

Business/Social Impact (30 points)

What problem do you want to solve and what are the business/social impacts associated with it?

Project Deliverables (30 points)

Show how you created your project, the hardware, software and tools used, including images, screenshots, and a video demonstration of your work and how to verify and validate your solution.

Quality (20 points)
The solution will be measured from multiple perspectives, including accuracy, performance, stability and ease of use perspective.

Innovation (20 points)
Does your solution demonstrate innovative thinking, does it bring new solutions to an existing problem, or apply existing solutions to a novel problem?

You grant Xilinx an irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide right and license to use, review, assess, test and otherwise analyze your entry and all its content in connection with this Contest.   If Xilinx does not receive a sufficient number of entries meeting the entry requirements, Xilinx may select fewer winners than the number of Contest prizes described in Section 5 of the contest rules.  

The Xilinx Adaptive Computing Contest is open for project entries from Tuesday, July 7, 2020 from 12:01 am (Pacific Time) to Friday, January 15, 2021 at 11:59 PM (Pacific Time); provided however, that all eligible contestants must first register for the Contest no later than Friday, August 14, 2020 at 11:59 PM (Pacific Time). Contest submissions must be sent no later than February 15, 2021 at 11:59 PM (Pacific Time).

If you received a free or loaner hardware and are unable to submit a project, please contact us at contest2020@xilinx.com and let us know as soon as possible. Hardware must be sent back to Xilinx.  

For the startup track, participants can use any hardware platforms, including custom platforms which are built around Xilinx 28nm/20nm/16nm devices. 

Participants can purchase their preferred Xilinx platform or device through a Xilinx Sales Representative or authorized distributor.

The startup track is open to any application and workload as long as the programmable logic of Xilinx devices play a major role in the acceleration of the application and workload. Applications to the startup track are subject to approval by Xilinx. 

Please visit the following forums for technical support.

• Vitis Forum - https://forums.xilinx.com/t5/Vitis-Acceleration-SDAccel-SDSoC/bd-p/tools_v
• Vitis AI Forum - https://forums.xilinx.com/t5/AI-and-Vitis-AI/bd-p/AI
• Alveo Forum - https://forums.xilinx.com/t5/Alveo-Accelerator-Cards/bd-p/alveo
• HLS Forum - https://forums.xilinx.com/t5/High-Level-Synthesis-HLS/bd-p/hls

After August 14^th, you will be notified of upcoming webinars to help you with development. You can also find additional resources  and documentation under the Vitis getting started tab. Once approved, more training material and tutorials will be made available in the startup lounge. 

You can find the full startup contest description here. 

General Requirements

• Organization must be registered as an eligible participant in this Contest.  Eligibility rules are described in Section 4 of the contest rules. This contest is not open to individuals.
• Every individual working on the Organization’s behalf, on a project submitted to the Contest, must create a personal user account on www.Xilinx.com.
• The Organization’s entry must be its own original work.  See Section 4 of the contest rules for further information.
  
• By submitting a project to this Contest on behalf of Organization, the individual must acknowledge that they are the designated representative authorized to act on behalf of the Organization. See Section 4 of the contest rules for further details.
• Organization must have been first officially established or legally registered within the last 8 years, and Organization must be less than 300 employees. The foregoing requirement does not apply to research institutions.
• No more than one team from each Organization may participate in this Contest. There is no limit on the number of employees/personnel on each team.
• Organization must make their submitted solution commercially available.

Technical Requirements - Organization must submit a project which includes the following materials:

• Basic information, including the solution overview, target markets and applications, business / social impact.
• List of hardware and software components.
• List of features supported.
• Full story of how your application project works, including screenshots and images.
• TCO analysis from performance, power and cost perspective, including the comparison of the same workload with CPU / GPU / ASIC.
• A discussion of how to test and validate your solution.
• Include prebuilt images, test scripts and instructions to Xilinx for validation.
• You must submit a 3 – 5 minutes demo video to introduce your work.
• You must submit a 30 minute presentation, reviewing your work in detail.
• You must notify contest2020@xilinx.com of your submission.
• Your project must be written in English.
• Your project must be submitted within the Entry Period.

To be eligible to compete in the startup contest, each individual employee/personnel of Organization must represent and certify to Xilinx, Inc. (“Xilinx”), on their own behalf and on behalf of their Organization, that they are not a resident of any Xilinx Restricted Country (see below) nor is their Organization registered or operating in any Xilinx Restricted Country, that neither they nor their Organization are on any sanctioned or restricted list published by any governmental agency or the United Nations, that they are 18 years or older as of the date of entry into the Xilinx Adaptive Computing Competition (the “Contest”), that they are not an employee, contractor, vendor, distributor, representative, or family member (defined as an immediate family member and/or persons living in the same household as the winner) of an employee or affiliated party of Xilinx, including but not limited to Xilinx’s subsidiaries, distributors, or sales representatives, its advertising or promotion agencies, parent companies, agents, officers, subsidiaries, service providers or affiliates, or any other person or entity directly associated with the Contest) (the “Contest Entities”), that Organization has designated them as an official representative of Organization with the power and authority to act on behalf of their Organization, that their and Organization’s entire entry only includes material (including hardware, source code – both open source and third party sourced, user interface, video or images) that they and/or their Organization owns or has permission to use such material from the owner of the intellectual property rights associated with such material, that their and Organization’s entry does not include copyrighted materials (such as source code, user interface, video or images) unless they or Organization own or have permission to use the materials, that the work they and Organization will and do submit to the Contest does not infringe or misappropriate the intellectual property rights of any other person or entity, that they hereby grant to Xilinx, on their own behalf and on behalf of their Organization, an irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide right and license to use, review, assess, test and otherwise analyze, in connection with this Contest, any work product, invention, software, code, design files, or other intellectual property associated with the work that they and Organization will and do submit to the Contest.  Employees of Xilinx, Inc., Xilinx subsidiaries, Xilinx distributors, and Xilinx sales representatives, as well as those involved in the development, production, implementation and distribution of this Contest, and their advertising or promotion agencies, parent companies, agents, officers, subsidiaries, service providers and affiliates, and any other persons or entities directly associated with this Contest ("Contest Entities") and members of the immediate families and/or persons living in the same household as such persons are ineligible to enter the Contest or win the prize.  If they are employed by a company that is not a Contest Entity but that buys from, sells to, competes with, or otherwise, does business with Xilinx or is in similar industry as Xilinx, they have the sole responsibility to review and understand their employer’s policies regarding employee eligibility to participate in this Contest.  If they are participating in violation of their employer’s policies, they may be disqualified from this Contest and from receiving the prize.  Xilinx disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for disputes arising between an employee and their employer related to this matter.

Other eligibility requirements:

• Every individual working on Organization’s behalf on a project submitted to the Contest must create a personal user account on www.Xilinx.com. 
• Organization must have been first officially established or legally registered within the last 8 years, and Organization must be less than 300 employees. The foregoing requirement does not apply to research institutions.
• No more than one team from each Organization may participate in this Contest. There is no limit on the number of employees/personnel on each team.
• Organization must make their submitted solution commercially available promptly upon the conclusion of the Contest.  

By submitting an entry to this Contest, you understand and acknowledge on your own behalf and on behalf of your Organization (i) that Xilinx may have developed or commissioned materials similar or identical to your submission and you and your Organization waive any claims you may have resulting from any similarities of Xilinx products and technologies to your entry, (ii) that after the submission deadline has passed, any project that has been submitted to the Contest will remain in Xilinx’s possession after the Contest has concluded, (iii) that Xilinx at its sole discretion has the right to remove any information or code submitted in the entry to address compliance with any applicable laws, address any of the restrictions described herein, or for editorial or other purposes deemed necessary, and you agree on your own behalf and on behalf of your Organization to sign any documentation necessary for Xilinx or its agents to make use of the foregoing rights.

Your entire entry only includes material (including hardware, source code – both open source and third party sourced, user interface, video or images) that you own or that you have permission to use such material from the owner of the intellectual property rights associated with such material, that your entry does not include copyrighted materials (such as source code, user interface, video or images) unless you own or have permission to use the materials, that the work you will and do submit to the Contest does not infringe or misappropriate the intellectual property rights of any other person or entity, that you acknowledge and agree that any work product, invention, software, code, design files, or other intellectual property associated with the work that you will an do submit to the Contest shall be released in source code form (or other human readable format) on a public Github website under the OSI-approved BSD 3-Clause open source license.

Organization’s entire entry only includes material (including hardware, source code – both open source and third party sourced, user interface, video or images) that they and/or their Organization owns or has permission to use such material from the owner of the intellectual property rights associated with such material, that their and Organization’s entry does not include copyrighted materials (such as source code, user interface, video or images) unless they or Organization own or have permission to use the materials, that the work they and Organization will and do submit to the Contest does not infringe or misappropriate the intellectual property rights of any other person or entity, that they hereby grant to Xilinx, on their own behalf and on behalf of their Organization, an irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide right and license to use, review, assess, test and otherwise analyze, in connection with this Contest, any work product, invention, software, code, design files, or other intellectual property associated with the work that they and Organization will and do submit to the Contest.