Ao486_MiSTer: i486 core for the MiSTer FPGA gaming system

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

Our great sponsors
  • Onboard AI - Learn any GitHub repo in 59 seconds
  • InfluxDB - Collect and Analyze Billions of Data Points in Real Time
  • SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews
  • ao486

    The ao486 is an x86 compatible Verilog core implementing all features of a 486 SX.

    There is a file generated by Quartus [here](https://github.com/alfikpl/ao486/blob/df6eba123654fdf3e3058c...). I'm not sure, but it does seem mostly manual. I tend to agree that RTL is somehow particularly mind numbing. I would guess that in order to keep track of things you may have a large block diagram on paper beforehand.

  • ao486_MiSTer

    ao486 port for MiSTer

  • Onboard AI

    Learn any GitHub repo in 59 seconds. Onboard AI learns any GitHub repo in minutes and lets you chat with it to locate functionality, understand different parts, and generate new code. Use it for free at www.getonboard.dev.

  • chipyard

    An Agile RISC-V SoC Design Framework with in-order cores, out-of-order cores, accelerators, and more

    Many companies do just write entire modern SoCs in straight Verilog (maybe with some autogenerated Verilog hacked in there) with no other major organization tools aside from the typical project management stuff. The load-store unit of a modern CPU alone easily exceeds 10k lines of Verilog. It's a similar thing as people who work with kernels—after all, the page table management code in a modern operating system like Linux is absolutely monstrous but still people are able to understand it well enough to be able to make the changes they need and get out.

    If you are interested in other languages which hope to make this sort of stuff easier, I'd recommend taking a look at design productivity languages like Chisel and it's associated Chipyard [1], SpinalHDL [2], and Bluespec [3]. Each of these are meant to make defining extremely complex hardware more manageable for humans and there's a lot of interesting work going on right now with each of them.

    [1] https://github.com/ucb-bar/chipyard

    [2] https://github.com/SpinalHDL/SpinalHDL

    [3] https://github.com/B-Lang-org/bsc

  • SpinalHDL

    Scala based HDL

    Many companies do just write entire modern SoCs in straight Verilog (maybe with some autogenerated Verilog hacked in there) with no other major organization tools aside from the typical project management stuff. The load-store unit of a modern CPU alone easily exceeds 10k lines of Verilog. It's a similar thing as people who work with kernels—after all, the page table management code in a modern operating system like Linux is absolutely monstrous but still people are able to understand it well enough to be able to make the changes they need and get out.

    If you are interested in other languages which hope to make this sort of stuff easier, I'd recommend taking a look at design productivity languages like Chisel and it's associated Chipyard [1], SpinalHDL [2], and Bluespec [3]. Each of these are meant to make defining extremely complex hardware more manageable for humans and there's a lot of interesting work going on right now with each of them.

    [1] https://github.com/ucb-bar/chipyard

    [2] https://github.com/SpinalHDL/SpinalHDL

    [3] https://github.com/B-Lang-org/bsc

  • bsc

    Bluespec Compiler (BSC) (by B-Lang-org)

    Many companies do just write entire modern SoCs in straight Verilog (maybe with some autogenerated Verilog hacked in there) with no other major organization tools aside from the typical project management stuff. The load-store unit of a modern CPU alone easily exceeds 10k lines of Verilog. It's a similar thing as people who work with kernels—after all, the page table management code in a modern operating system like Linux is absolutely monstrous but still people are able to understand it well enough to be able to make the changes they need and get out.

    If you are interested in other languages which hope to make this sort of stuff easier, I'd recommend taking a look at design productivity languages like Chisel and it's associated Chipyard [1], SpinalHDL [2], and Bluespec [3]. Each of these are meant to make defining extremely complex hardware more manageable for humans and there's a lot of interesting work going on right now with each of them.

    [1] https://github.com/ucb-bar/chipyard

    [2] https://github.com/SpinalHDL/SpinalHDL

    [3] https://github.com/B-Lang-org/bsc

  • icestudio

    :snowflake: Visual editor for open FPGA boards

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

Suggest a related project

Related posts