FuseSoC is an award-winning package manager and a set of build tools for HDL (Hardware Description Language) code.
Its main purpose is to increase reuse of IP (Intellectual Property) cores and be an aid for creating, building and simulating SoC solutions.
FuseSoC makes it easier to
- reuse existing cores
- create compile-time or run-time configurations
- run regression tests against multiple simulators
- Port designs to new targets
- let other projects use your code
- set up continuous integration
FuseSoC is non-intrusive Most existing designs doesn't need any changes to work with FuseSoC. Any FuseSoC-specific patches can be applied on the fly during implementation or simulation
FuseSoC is modular It can be used as an end-to-end flow, to create initial project files for an EDA tool or integrate with your custom workflow
FuseSoC is extendable Latest release support simulating with GHDL, Icarus Verilog, Isim, ModelSim, Verilator and Xsim. It also supports building FPGA images with Altera Quartus, project IceStorm, Xilinx ISE and Xilinx Vivado. Support for a new EDA tool requires ~100 new lines of code and new tools are added continuously
FuseSoC is standard-compliant Much effort has gone into leveraging existing standards such as IP-XACT and vendor-specific core formats where applicable.
FuseSoC is resourceful The standard core library currently consisting of over 100 cores including CPUs, peripheral controllers, interconnects, complete SoCs and utility libraries. Other core libraries exist as well and can be added to complement the standard library
FuseSoC is free software It puts however no restrictions on the cores and can be used to manage your company's internal proprietary core collections as well as public open source projects
FuseSoC is battle-proven It has been used to successfully build or simulate projects such as Nyuzi, Pulpino, VScale, various OpenRISC SoCs, picorv32, osvvm and more.
Read more in the online documentation, or get straight into business with the quick start below
Install latest stable version:
sudo pip install fusesoc
or install latest development version from git:
git clone https://github.com/olofk/fusesoc cd fusesoc sudo pip install -e .
FuseSoC should now be installed and ready to use. Next step is to add some cores to use with FuseSoC. FuseSoC itself doesn't come with any cores but there is a FuseSoC base library with a lot of useful cores. In addition to that, many projects such as OpenTitan, SweRVolf and OpenPiton provide their own core libraries.
If you have one of the supported simulators installed, and want to do a quick check to see that it's working, follow the steps below, or look at the tutorial in the online documentation for a more thorough introduction.
Create and enter an empty workspace
mkdir workspace cd workspace
Install the FuseSoc base library into the workspace
fusesoc library add fusesoc-cores https://github.com/fusesoc/fusesoc-cores
Get a list of cores found in the workspace
fusesoc core list
If you have any of the supported simulators installed, you can try to run a simulation on one of the cores as well.
For example, fusesoc run --target=sim i2c will run a regression test on the core i2c with icarus verilog. If you want to try another simulator instead, add e.g. --tool=modelsim or --tool=xcelium between run and i2c.
fusesoc --help will give you more information on commands and switches.
Did it work? Great! FuseSoC can be used to create FPGA images, perform linting, manage your IP libraries or do formal verification as well. Check out the online documentation and tutorial to learn more about creating your own core files and using existing ones. If it didn't work, please get in touch
A good way to get your first hands-on experience with FuseSoC is to contribute to the LED to Believe project. This project aims to used FuseSoC to blink a LED on every available FPGA development board in existence. There are already around 40 different boards supported. If you're board is already supported, great, then you can run your first FuseSoC-based design. If it's not supported, great, you now have the chance to add it to the list of supported boards. Either way, head over to LED to Believe to learn more and see how to go from a blinking LED to running a RISC-V core on an FPGA.
The online documentation contains a tutorial as well as information for users and developers of cores, or FuseSoC itself. For some quick communication with the active developers, feel free to join us at the FuseSoC chat. If you have found an issue, or want to know more about currently known problems, check out the issue tracker.
If you are looking for professional paid support, we are happy to provide feature additions, bug fixes, user training, setting up core libraries, migrating existing designs to FuseSoC and other things.
Please contact olof.kindgren@gmail.com for more info
- A Scalable Approach to IP Management with FuseSoC paper and slides from OSDA 2019 https://osda.gitlab.io/19/kindgren.pdf https://osda.gitlab.io/19/kindgren-slides.pdf
- Antmicro blog post on how to use FuseSoC as a linter https://antmicro.com/blog/2020/04/systemverilog-linter-and-formatter-in-fusesoc/
- FuseSoC-related posts on the Tales from Beyond the Register Map blog http://olofkindgren.blogspot.com/search/label/FuseSoC
- Presentation from Latch-Up Portland 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eWRAOK9mns
- Presentation from WOSH 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOFYplIBSWM
- Presentation from ORConf 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPpT9k_H67k
- Presentation from ORConf 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKlJWe_HKPM