nimporter VS chisel

Nimporter

Erg looks fun for small programs. Though Erg's syntax choices seem less Pythonic than I'd expected. Interesting though, some of the idioms seem handy.

Though Nim definitely can be described as a statically typed Python-compatible language! I haven't used them but https://github.com/Pebaz/nimporter https://github.com/yglukhov/nimpy both seem great. Nimporter in particular looks fantastic for writing fast python libraries.

Actually come to think of it that might be the easiest way to write fast KiCad 6 plugins.. I really want to try making a native KiCad autorouter. But I don't want to figure out the C++ plugin setup and since KiCad 6 the Python APIs seem better documented and supported anyways. Problem is that Python would likely be too slow. Nimporter could be perfect. It looks really simple to setup.

nimpy + nimporter is getting fairly mature. I've had my eye on the libraries for awhile now and I'm starting to seriously consider adding Nim to the build pipeline at werk.

c2nim is a tool to translate ANSI C code to Nim. The output is human-readable Nim code that is meant to be tweaked by hand after the translation process. If you are tired of wrapping C library, you can try futhark which supports "simply import C header files directly into Nim". Similar to futhark, cinterop allows one to interop with C/C++ code without having to create wrappers. nimLUA is a glue code generator to bind Nim and Lua together using Nim's powerful macro. nimpy and nimporter is a bridge between Nim and Python. rnim is a bridge between R and Nim. nimjl is a bridge between Nim and Julia! Last but not least, genny generates a shared library and bindings for many languages such as Python, Node.js, C.

For the specific case of Python executing Nim code you might be interested in [nimporter](https://github.com/Pebaz/nimporter) instead. Genny would definitely work for you as well, but it seems to be more geared towards creating libraries in Nim that can be imported by multiple languages.

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

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.

Already mentioned Chisel: https://www.chisel-lang.org/

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.

What are your thoughts on other HDLs like Chisel or BlueSpec when it comes to better type checking?

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.

But some go further and ask "what if when we add a soldering station on top of it?"

In recent years Chisel HDL, RISC V, and SiFive came out of their architecture group, to name a few.