Other FPGA programming

[MaxRusse11]

What tools/IDEs can be used from FreeBSD, ideally from ports or packages directly for programming FPGA?
I found openfpgaloader listed under FreshPorts but wondered if people had any experience of working directly with FPGA from FreeBSD and/or specific tool recommendations?

I want to work with a lattice based board. There is a linux version of their ICECube2 available. Possibly this could be run under compatibility?

Thanks

 

[tingo]

There are quite a few tools for FPGA in the ports / packages already: cad/apio, comms/ujprog, devel/lattice-ice40-examples-hx1k, devel/lattice-ice40-examples-hx8k, devel/lattice-ice40-tools, devel/nextpnr, cad/py-amaranth,
just to name a few.

 

[SirDice]

There's also devel/icestorm and cad/yosys. Don't know how well they work though, I haven't found an ICE40 dev board I like.

 

[MaxRusse11]

There's also devel/icestorm and cad/yosys. Don't know how well they work though, I haven't found an ICE40 dev board I like.

I'm going to be using the Nandland Go board. I started with it ages ago on a windows system, but it's been sat aside for a while. I've tried the ICEcube installer on Mint distro, but it didn't work. Which makes me want to get back to a full time FreeBSD system.

 

[tingo]

The Nandland Go board works well with icestorm and yosys. Fond memories.

 

[MaxRusse11]

The Nandland Go board works well with icestorm and yosys. Fond memories.

Thanks for this. Advice which means I'll most definitely be restoring a FreeBSD system.

 

[Partmedia]

I'm bringing up a new design with a Lattice FPGA and thought I would share. I'm prototyping on the Lattice iCEstick Evaluation Kit but will eventually bring it up on a custom board.

1. yosys is a great choice for logic synthesis, and it works "out of the box" with Lattice ice40 devices via synth_ice40
2. nextpnr has superseded arachne-pnr as the physical design tool of choice
3. Use icestorm to get the bitstream on your board

Of course if you're working on a new design, you may also have to write, simulate, and test RTL. I like to use iverilog and gtkwave. If you find iverilog too slow, I ported the open source version of the CVC simulator to FreeBSD, though if you want to use that I'll have to dig out my old notes...

 

[dino1]

While I am not working with Lattice FPGA, I think CVC might be of some interest to anybody working with RTL. That being said, there is cad/cvc in FreeBSD port tree. Is it the same thing or something different?

 

[SirDice]

That being said, there is cad/cvc in FreeBSD port tree. Is it the same thing or something different?

Judging by the descriptions on the Tachyon site and the cad/cvc port and the various links to download, they're not the same.

 

[Partmedia]

Yes, devel/cvc is something different

It seems like there's some interest so I'll take a look and see if I can make this cvc available from the ports collection.

 

[MaxRusse11]

whichever tools will be like being spoonfed at a molecular level would be preference.