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Future Ideas

Graphical HDL Block Design Tool (ghbd)

I've got a proof of concept for this, but imagine Xilinx Vivado Block Design except:

  • Open source
  • Easier to use
  • Vendor agnostic
  • Integrated with fusesoc or similar

Language Server for Vivado

Wouldn't it be lovely if there was a Language Server Protocol compatible app that allowed you to autocomplete Xilinx Vivado tcl commands.

This would avoid you from having to use the official documentation, which is really hard to use, and avoids having to open vivado to try commands to see what options they support.

OpenCPI Reborn

An aggressive rewrite (really, a re-imagining) of OpenCPI.

Features would include:

  • As much VHDL as possible; ideally everything is VHDL.
  • Rely on fusesoc as the build system.
  • ghdl would be the primary simulator, used primarily with cocotb.
  • Make heavy use of OSS VHDL libraries.
  • Integrate the libraries behind ghbd to perform assembly generation from highly configurable YAML files.
  • AXI Interconnects by default.
  • C++ library to interact with applications, with Python and Rust as first class bindings.
  • Protocols between workers would be defined using generics.
    • This would allow for far more code to be reused.