amaranth VS ibex

He probably meant Amaranth.

As an aside, the latest and active development of nMigen has been rebranded a few months ago to Amaranth and can be found here: https://github.com/amaranth-lang/amaranth . In case people googled nMigen and came to the repository that hasn't been updated in two years.

Hmm. A followup question: are there any cheats/hacks that would make it possible (if painful) to for example explore the world of USB3, PCIe, or Linux on low-end-ish ARM (eg https://www.thirtythreeforty.net/posts/2019/12/my-business-c..., based on the 533MHz https://linux-sunxi.org/F1C100s), without needing to buy equipment in the mid-4-figure/low-5-figure range, if I were able to substitute a statistically larger-than-average amount of free time (and discipline)?

For example, I learned about https://github.com/GlasgowEmbedded/glasgow recently, a bit of a niche kitchen sink that uses https://github.com/nmigen/nmigen/ to lower a domain-specific subset of Python 3 (https://nmigen.info/nmigen/latest/lang.html) into Verilog which then runs on the Glasgow board's iCE40HX8K. The project basically makes it easier to use cheap FPGAs for rapid iteration. (The README makes a point that the synthesis is sufficiently fast that caching isn't needed.)

In certain extremely specific situations where circumstances align perfectly (caveat emptor), devices like this can sometimes present a temporary escape to the inevitable process of acquiring one's first second-hand high-end oscilloscope (fingers-crossed the expensive bits still have a few years left in them). To some extent they may also commoditize the exploration of very high-speed interfaces, which are rapidly becoming a commonplace principal of computers (eg, having 10Gbps everywhere when USB3.1 hits market saturation will be interesting) faster than test and analysis kit can keep up (eg to do proper hardware security analysis work). The Glasgow is perhaps not quite an answer to that entire statement, but maybe represents beginning steps in that sort of direction.

So, to reiterate - it's probably an unhelpfully broad question, and I'm still learning about the field so haven't quite got the preciseness I want yet, but I'm curious what gadgetry, techniques, etc would perhaps allow someone to "hack it" and dive into this stuff on a shoestring budget? :)

Worth knowing that are two "nmigen"s nowadays - the one originated in M-Labs and one under a project also called nmigen:

https://github.com/nmigen/nmigen

It's a fork, made for reasons, but more actively developed. whitequark (long time author/contributor) works on this fork, and no longer the M-Labs version.

Sounds like nmigen might be a good open source successor to the project that you describe: https://github.com/nmigen/nmigen

> Right now, most devices on the market do not support the C extension

This is not true and easily verifiable.

The C extension is defacto required, the only cores that don't support it are special purpose soft cores.

C extension in the smallest IP available core https://github.com/olofk/serv?tab=readme-ov-file

Supports M and C extensions https://github.com/YosysHQ/picorv32

Another sized optimized core with C extension support https://github.com/lowrisc/ibex

C extension in the 10 cent microcontroller https://www.wch-ic.com/products/CH32V003.html

This one should get your goat, it implements as much as it can using only compressed instructions https://github.com/gsmecher/minimax

We've had people consider Ibex for space applications, well verified and has a dual-core lockstep option: https://github.com/lowRISC/ibex.

An ETH Zurich team have done a triple core lockstep version for cubesats: https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/05/riscv_microcontroller...

I definitely agree with the primary point, "building a chip that meets specfic requirements we got from the customer" is not easy and it what matters.

However, RISCV cores abound. In pretty much any computing language known to man with varying design trade-offs and capabilities. It's extremely difficult to differentiate at the RTL level at this time.

Here is a high quality, well documented, SystemVerilog version intended for embedded applications that I know has been included in multiple ASIC and FPGA designs successfully.

https://github.com/lowRISC/ibex

lowRISC's (www.lowrisc.org) mission is to bring open source silicon to the hardware world and see it shipping in volume in commercial applications. We want to see open source silicon occupy a similar position to open source software (e.g. look at Linux, it's the default choice in many applications, we'd like open source silicon to be used for similar foundational technologies in the hardware world).

Here I will just use Ibex, a risc-v processor as an example, of which the repository is here: lowrisc_ibex. There are many files in this repository and I wonder which files I need given a specific configuration (for example, the configuration of "maxperf"), and how I can combine all the necessary files together, feed them to verilator and get its verilated model? I understand that only by going through this step will I acquire necessary C++ header files to write the testbench

i think it might be worth it to post it here because lowrisc develops ibex (a open source risc-v core).

Yeah but you can have both an open source (e.g. ibex) and closed source implementations for controllers (the open source one is free and you can improve it and even close its source so competitors won't benefit from your improvements) , and you can migrate from one supplier to another without spending a lot of money on migrating the software.

I am pretty new to RISC-V and open-source hardware and just began learning and working with them as part of my research. I searched about different models that have some credible documents and research done into them and decided I would try and use the ibex as the hardware language is easier for me to follow too.

Ibex is open source and has taped out - https://github.com/lowRISC/ibex

That said we used Spike as a reference simulator for verifying Ibex (RISC-V core I work on, https://github.com/lowRISC/ibex) and we run an extensive set of random programs through it comparing its execution to Ibex's and I've not come across any major issues.