chisel
myhdl
chisel | myhdl | |
---|---|---|
25 | 15 | |
3,722 | 1,006 | |
1.1% | 1.2% | |
9.7 | 5.1 | |
2 days ago | 2 months ago | |
Scala | Python | |
Apache License 2.0 | GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 only |
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chisel
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Calyx: Intermediate Language for Hardware Accelerators
My first instinct was to ask "Does this play well with CIRCT?" And thankfully they answer that right away in the README.
I'm personally of the opinion that there is a LOT of room for improvement in the hardware design tooling space, but a combination of market consolidation, huge pressure to meet deadlines, and an existing functional pipeline of Verilog/VHDL talent is preventing changes.
That's not to say "Verilog/VHDL are bad", because clearly they've been good enough to support nearly all of the wonderful designs powering today's devices. But it is to say, "the startup scene for hardware will continue to look anemic compared to the SaaS scene until someone gives me all of the niceties I have for building SaaS tools in software."
A huge amount of ideas (and entire designs) start off as software sims, which enables kernel/compiler engineers to start building out support for new hardware before it's manufactured.
There is some interesting work going on at SiFive building hardware with Chisel[1], as well as some interesting work lead by a professor at William and Mary to improve simulations[2].
1: https://www.chisel-lang.org
2: https://github.com/sarchlab/akita
- Chisel: A Modern Hardware Design Language
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I may be creating an abomination
Inspired by Scala. Which can do a whole lot more, and worse. The currently biggest competitor to decades old hardware description languages is a Scala DSL.
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An addressable little explored language gap: HDL - Hardware Description Languages, any language used for electronic circuit design, description, and specs
Already mentioned Chisel: https://www.chisel-lang.org/
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Trying to learn and work with FPGAs
I'm also a hobbyist. There are a number of alternative HDLs out there, and as hobbyists we can deviate more from the mainstream of (System)Verilog and VHDL if we desire, though you'll still need to be able to read them. In the past I've done Verilog, but lately I've been using SpinalHDL and have been really enjoying it. Its close relative Chisel also makes appearances in the RISC-V space.
- Alternate HDL language and Physical Design/EDA tools?
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Learning VDHL after knowing Verilog
What are your thoughts on other HDLs like Chisel or BlueSpec when it comes to better type checking?
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Learning Verilog and FPGA
I started playing with FPGAs and HDLs a couple years ago with no hardware design background (I'm mostly a software architect/engineer) and in the end found that a "higher-level" HDL suited me better.
I chose Chisel (https://www.chisel-lang.org/) an HDL based on Scala (technically a Scala DSL) which can provide many facilities to hardware generation.
I'd highly advise looking into it although also knowing Verilog helps a lot.
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If you keep clicking "Give 15 seconds" on Lichess, eventually it overflows to a negative number and you win
But some go further and ask "what if when we add a soldering station on top of it?"
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What universities have good PhD programmes in digital design?
In recent years Chisel HDL, RISC V, and SiFive came out of their architecture group, to name a few.
myhdl
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Launch HN: SiLogy (YC W24) – Chip design and verification in the cloud
Thank you for tackling this critical problem for logic designiners. I think the tools available are much too old for fast paced workflows.
From my experience attempting to get a similar workflow down for my company:
I tried to use verilator a while back but ultimately I couldn't because it didn't have same constraints in the verilog language features that I was going to use in production. It doesn't even matter who was missing a feature, verilator or the proprietary tool, it was just about getting them to be same that caused the cognitive dissonance that I didn't want to deal with.
I ultimately decided to move away from verilator and use the clunky proprietary tools since it was what would be used in production. Getting "verilator compatibility" seemed like a "nice to have".
Second, the a winning local-first framework of verilator wasn't really established. You show in your example running a test from the yaml file using what looks like a bash script. Even as an experienced programmer who knows bash and sh well, I still find it very hard to write complex thoughts in it. The last high level attempt I found to bridge this gap is likely https://www.myhdl.org/ I don't know them personally, but it seemed like they had some very good thoughts on what makes writing good hardware level tests good. I think it would be worth reaching out to them if you haven't already.
The one thing that even more critical was a way to run our tests locally. The 10-20 seconds it takes to start a docker image (best case) in the cloud is really frustrating when you are "so close to finding a bug" and you "just want to see if this one line change is going to fix it". Once we got our whole pipeline going, it would take 1-6 minutes to "start a run" since it often had to rebuild previous steps that cache large parts of the design.
So I think you will want to see how you can help bring people's "local's first" workflows slowly into the cloud. Some tools (or just tutorials) that help you take a failing test, and run it locally and on the cloud will be really good especially as you get people to transition!
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Why are there only 3 languages for FPGA development?
Also PyMTL, PyRTL, and MyHDL.
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Choice of Python HDL library
MyHDL
- Show HN: PyCircTools – Build digital circuits using Python
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Tools for designing hardware in Python
Any hardware designers here who use Python for designing hardware? There are a bunch of libraries that all seem promising MyHDL, PyRTL, PyVerilog, PyLog, PyMTL3, ... All seem to work roughly the same. Write code in Python and transpile it to VHDL/Verilog. Which of these are popular and well-maintained? MyHDL looks good but it's last release was 0.10 in 2018 and for hardware design you don't want to rely on 0.x software. Anything like Chisel for Python.
- Design Hardware with Python
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FPGA engineers specialize in DSP. What is your job? How much do you get paid? What is your work day like?
It is : https://www.myhdl.org/
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Compiling Code into Silicon
Personally I have fond memories of MyHDL [0], which may be seen as another "code-to-silicon" converter (or at least as the first step of a code-to-silicon workflow). I used it only briefly, and on a school project that had surprisingly little to do with actual hardware design [1], but it really felt "Pythonic" in the best possible way.
[0]: https://www.myhdl.org/
[1]: https://github.com/lou1306/gssi/tree/master/2pc
- MyHDL open-source package for using Python as a hardware description
- GitHub - myhdl/myhdl: MyHDL is a free, open-source package for using Python as a hardware description and verification language.
What are some alternatives?
SpinalHDL - Scala based HDL
nmigen - A refreshed Python toolbox for building complex digital hardware. See https://gitlab.com/nmigen/nmigen
amaranth - A modern hardware definition language and toolchain based on Python
pymtl3 - Pymtl 3 (Mamba), an open-source Python-based hardware generation, simulation, and verification framework
cocotb - cocotb, a coroutine based cosimulation library for writing VHDL and Verilog testbenches in Python
PyRTL - A collection of classes providing simple hardware specification, simulation, tracing, and testing suitable for teaching and research. Simplicity, usability, clarity, and extendability rather than performance or optimization is the overarching goal.
skywater-pdk - Open source process design kit for usage with SkyWater Technology Foundry's 130nm node.
Pyverilog - Python-based Hardware Design Processing Toolkit for Verilog HDL
bsc - Bluespec Compiler (BSC)
circt - Circuit IR Compilers and Tools