The open source FPGA toolchain comprising of Yosys and nextpnr has been improving over the last 3 years and is now capable of synthesizing soft cores that can run Linux. The tools are not only lightweight, but also fast, opening up new avenues of exploration such as synthesising bitstreams on demand.
This workshop aims to give a good general overview of the state of the tools and how to use them. Some time will be allowed for experimentation with the tools and participant’s own designs.
We introduce the icebreaker - a new FPGA development board with the low power iCE40 FPGA, designed for teaching and experimentation. After installing and getting to grips with the toolchain, everyone will deploy a simple system-on-chip based on the formally verified picorv32 RISC-V softcore onto it.
Experience some of the benefits of formal verification with this hands on afternoon workshop. You will be introduced to the concept of formal verification, and learn the basics of how to use the open source tools to verify your designs.
Many engineers find formal tools too intimidating or expensive to use. The new open source tools developed by Symbiotic EDA are free to use and simple to start.
Formal tools greatly benefit the designer by providing additional assurance in the design and quickly discovering bugs that would be difficult to find with traditional simulation approaches.
Questions? Email david@symbioticeda.com