litex VS litedram

https://github.com/enjoy-digital/litex

they have tutorials, you can get compatible boards for around $20

With LiteX you can synthesize a VexRiscV processor. You can run Linux on it. The toolchain is pretty easy to use, as long as you use Xilinx Vivado to compile to gateware.

LiteX is a great example of a Python-first flow. However, they have chosen not to subordinate the scripting environment to a GUI toolchain - EDA vendors are unlikely to choose the same trade.

To lean these: https://github.com/enjoy-digital/litex, https://github.com/m-labs/migen

If you use LiteX to generate a VexRiscV system-on-a-chip, you can include an open source DDR DRAM PHY. This works on Xilinx Spartan-6, Spartan7Artix7/Kintex7/Virtex7 FPGAs, and Lattice ECP5 FPGAs. DDR/LPDDR/DDR2/DDR3 depending on the FPGA.

I am interested in trying out FPGAs for the purpose of running specific calculations more efficiently. Since the calculations themselves are quite complex, I would need to be able to program in a relatively high-level language. I've seen that designing SoC in Python is possible, for example with Litex (https://github.com/enjoy-digital/litex) or Amaranth (https://github.com/amaranth-lang/). I don't want to spend hundreds of hours learning about FPGAs, but I'm prepared to take on a challenge.

I could be wrong, but I don't think the LiteX DRAM PHY is using the UG586 block. Here's the Litex Series 7 DRAM PHY source code - it appears to be hardcoding the PHY logic. The Lattice ECP5 code in that directory does the same thing.

Try https://github.com/enjoy-digital/litedram with a RAW or FIFO interface. It is in Migen, a python DSL HDL, but you could just use the output.

You could try to implement a PCIe root complex for FOSS SoCs, connecting to e.g. Wishbone as the main bus. There's already some DDR3 controller (or this one) and USB Host controller out there, and even device-side PCIe, but no FOSS host-side PCIe that I know of. Probably quite a difficult job though, even sticking to the lower-speed PCIe 1.

So for instance (and AFAI understand...) the DDR2 sdram controller uses a generic PHY (https://github.com/enjoy-digital/litedram/blob/master/litedram/phy/gensdrphy.py) , but the DDR3 one has to talk to some vendor-specific PHY (e.g. https://github.com/enjoy-digital/litedram/blob/master/litedram/phy/s7ddrphy.py ). The controller itself is vendor-agnostic (https://github.com/enjoy-digital/litedram/blob/master/litedram/core/controller.py). On Xilinx FPGA it doesn't rely on MIG at all.