open-sourced FPGA (vhdl, verilog, C variants) design libraries, working toward a GNU (for hardware) paradigm

has anyone in the dig. design and reconfig. computing community looked 
seriously at open source hardware design libraries, working toward a 
hardware paradigm similar to that in the open source software community?
I am aware of the existence of opencores.org, but this seems like a 
small first step, of which many more could be taken toward improving the 
availability and ease of access and use of open source logic designs.
does anyone have any thoughts or knowledge or any thing to say about
an open source hardware paradigm?


thanks,

Geoffrey Wall
Masters Student in Electrical/Computer Engineering
Florida State University, FAMU/FSU College of Engineering
wallge@eng.fsu.edu
Cell Phone:
850.339.4157

ECE Machine Intelligence Lab
http://www.eng.fsu.edu/mil
MIL Office Phone:
850.410.6145

Center for Applied Vision and Imaging Science
http://cavis.fsu.edu/
CAVIS Office Phone:
850.645.2257

I seriously doubt you see anything much bigger that the snippets on Open 
Cores.  This is may be different in the educational community where open 
source is much more widely used, but in industry very few would be 
willing to give away what they spent zillions of man hours developing.

Try going to to nVidia and asking for the source to their logic models 
of their video chips!  Why would they want to give the competitors their 
design?  I understand that a lot of open source is aimed to be portable 
across many systems.  People tend to confuse HDL as 'software'.  It is 
not a program like a 'C' program for a CPU.  It is actually describing 
hardware and often has to use primitives that are only available on 
certain ASICs, FPGAs, etc.     You rarely optimize for portability. 
When I need to get something running fast, you MUST optimize for the 
architecture of your medium to push clock speed, etc.   The HDL you end 
up may not be very useful to someone using a different ASIC. 
Furthermore, many man-hours are spent in this process and most companies 
are not willing to do this for somebody else's benefit.

One could make the argument that there should be a library for simple 
constructs that would be common to all FPGA, ASIC platforms.  What you 
would end with is the equivalent of a C library that only adds to 
numbers. Not very useful for serious work.

In the FPGA world, there are lots of places were you can buy working IP 
cores that are fully documented and supported.  My boss isn't willing to 
spend 4 times the cost of working 3rd party IP to debug an open source 
version that isn't documented that well and has no support.

The problem in this model is the same problem with the open source 
software community. While some of the products are nice, they are 
plagued with *lots* of useless projects/libraries that take a week to 
install, have poor documentation and no support.  Why would I want to 
spend my time on that.  Most forget that while open source stuff is free 
, it may take 4 times the time to use.  This is only cheaper if your 
time doesn't cost a whole lot.

All this being said, I really like the open cores site.  I would use it 
for hobby/side projects. As for serious commercial projects, I place 
more trust in either my own or paid for IP that is tested and supported.

-Eli







g.wall wrote:
> has anyone in the dig. design and reconfig. computing community looked 
> seriously at open source hardware design libraries, working toward a 
> hardware paradigm similar to that in the open source software community?
> I am aware of the existence of opencores.org, but this seems like a 
> small first step, of which many more could be taken toward improving the 
> availability and ease of access and use of open source logic designs.
> does anyone have any thoughts or knowledge or any thing to say about
> an open source hardware paradigm?
> 
> 
> thanks,
> 
> Geoffrey Wall
> Masters Student in Electrical/Computer Engineering
> Florida State University, FAMU/FSU College of Engineering
> wallge@eng.fsu.edu
> Cell Phone:
> 850.339.4157
> 
> ECE Machine Intelligence Lab
> http://www.eng.fsu.edu/mil
> MIL Office Phone:
> 850.410.6145
> 
> Center for Applied Vision and Imaging Science
> http://cavis.fsu.edu/
> CAVIS Office Phone:
> 850.645.2257

I'm using the GRLIB/LEON processor from Gaisler research
(www.gaisler.com) which provides a fairly flexible/implementation
independent set of VHDL libraries to implement a 32bit SPARC compliant
processor.

The project appears popular with the European Space Agency, and LEON
based designs keep popping up all over... From satellite applications
to network routing.

The library is available under a dual license scheme where a GPLed
version is released, but a commercial license is also available.  This
allows/encourages academic research/playing around (which I confess i'm
doing), while also allowing developers to build their own (proprietary)
applications on the LEON base.  This model makes the whole project much
more sustainable than other after-hours hobby type projects.

But it  can be tricky applying the GPL to an HDL project, because
traditional concepts like source code and binary executables are
transferred to a domain with source, several intermediate netlist
formats, some of which can be regarded as source when you're wide
awake... And distribution of embedded systems is the other ill defined
part - most users don't care/know about the embedded configurable
logic, and they are unlikely to expand on a very application specific
design (as Eli stated above).  And what happens when you start
combining HDL code with presynthesised netlists?  I think a modified
(HDL) GPL would be required to accurately cover the issue, much as is
done by the GNU Free Documentation License.

In the meantime, if I have a nifty piece of HDL solving a problem, I'll
probably post it somewhere, and hope someone else finds a use for it...
 

johannes

On a sunny day (Thu, 10 Nov 2005 11:24:08 -0500) it happened Eli Hughes
<emh203@psu.edu> wrote in <dkvs78$s80$1@f04n12.cac.psu.edu>:

>I seriously doubt you see anything much bigger that the snippets on Open 
>Cores.  This is may be different in the educational community where open 
>source is much more widely used, but in industry very few would be 
>willing to give away what they spent zillions of man hours developing.
>
>One could make the argument that there should be a library for simple 
>constructs that would be common to all FPGA, ASIC platforms.  What you 
>would end with is the equivalent of a C library that only adds to 
>numbers. Not very useful for serious work.
Not completely correct, does not Altera has the 7400 TTL library?
Is not opencores doing this exactly?

>In the FPGA world, there are lots of places were you can buy working IP 
>cores that are fully documented and supported.  My boss isn't willing to 
>spend 4 times the cost of working 3rd party IP to debug an open source 
>version that isn't documented that well and has no support.
My experience with open source, as a WRITER of open source, is that 
bug are fixed and replies are within one or 2 days (by me).
Some people take weeks to reply-- if at all. YMMV.
Some send you a very complicated question you spend ages to figure out,
you reply, and then never hear anything....
Some commercial companies have the same pattern, for example Xilinx
representatives here.
THESE behave almost like it is a favor that you can buy a FPGA.
And on the other side of it, lots<<< of those 'commercial companies / IP'
you seem to like so much, grab open source code and use it in their product
WITHOUT mentioning or respecting GPL.
I even found one website that sold my GPL program, hehe I announced a new
feature, so did they, then I left it at the announcement :-) So they were
stuck.. I could do that.. Bad for a commercial company, not sure
they still are on the net.
Kiss DVD players grabbed code from the mplayer project, some Chinese company
actually ASKED me if they could use my code, I wanted to negotiate a price,
then they were going to use it anyways, I referred to the GPL, and
'clean room' BIOS designs, they let somebody else do the coding..... in that
company.. who did not use my source.. believe it? Its true, hard to argue.
So, and I have seen this happen in places I worked, websearch 'grab those
few lines of code'.
Natural thing.
At that time my boss had the decency to try to contact the guy and pay him
something.


>The problem in this model is the same problem with the open source 
>software community. While some of the products are nice, they are 
>plagued with *lots* of useless projects/libraries that take a week to 
>install, have poor documentation and no support.
Ever try to install and run an official MS library?
Most open source projects install without problems (on the right 
architecture).
You mean you do not want to think AT ALL?
;-)

> Why would I want to 
>spend my time on that.  Most forget that while open source stuff is free 
>, it may take 4 times the time to use.  This is only cheaper if your 
>time doesn't cost a whole lot.
Not correct, it does not 4 times the time to use, makes no sense.


>All this being said, I really like the open cores site.  I would use it 
>for hobby/side projects. As for serious commercial projects, I place 
>more trust in either my own or paid for IP that is tested and supported.

Sure, many times I wrote something because it was not there (in Linux).
that is how the 50+ applications I released under GPL came about.
If it EXISTED I would not have bothered writing it.

Sure a HDL library would be nice, if a university has that, maintains
that, then it will benefit everybody, save you money.
But if released under GPL-1 the rest of your HDL will likely have to be
under GPL too.
So, I have heard they are working on GPL-3 now..... do not know details.
Software patents should not exist.
And yes I admit to keeping HDL secret to protect others copying the design.
It is the last border, the last defense!
(... capitalism - communism... but maybe we need a synthesis, look at China).

But wait, somebody will invent the (startrek) replicator, and then what.

> 
> Not completely correct, does not Altera has the 7400 TTL library?
> Is not opencores doing this exactly?

Yes, but having a TTL library is only useful for doing schematic in 
Altera's tools, not HDL.  Evening thinking in TTL when you have an HDL 
is counter-productive!

> My experience with open source, as a WRITER of open source, is that 
> bug are fixed and replies are within one or 2 days (by me).
> Some people take weeks to reply-- if at all. YMMV.
> Some send you a very complicated question you spend ages to figure out,
> you reply, and then never hear anything....
> Some commercial companies have the same pattern, for example Xilinx
> representatives here.
> THESE behave almost like it is a favor that you can buy a FPGA.
> And on the other side of it, lots<<< of those 'commercial companies / IP'
> you seem to like so much, grab open source code and use it in their product
> WITHOUT mentioning or respecting GPL.
> I even found one website that sold my GPL program, hehe I announced a new
> feature, so did they, then I left it at the announcement :-) So they were
> stuck.. I could do that.. Bad for a commercial company, not sure
> they still are on the net.
> Kiss DVD players grabbed code from the mplayer project, some Chinese company
> actually ASKED me if they could use my code, I wanted to negotiate a price,
> then they were going to use it anyways, I referred to the GPL, and
> 'clean room' BIOS designs, they let somebody else do the coding..... in that
> company.. who did not use my source.. believe it? Its true, hard to argue.
> So, and I have seen this happen in places I worked, websearch 'grab those
> few lines of code'.
> Natural thing.
> At that time my boss had the decency to try to contact the guy and pay him
> something.

I would agree mostly with this.  But, generally for any company that is 
worth a damn I have never had a problem with support.

> Ever try to install and run an official MS library?

Yes, double clikc on icon.  Wait a bit.  Start programming.  My 
experience with PC/GUI stuff is very limited though. I like to live in 
the hardware/micrcontroller world where I have control.  I do not wish 
to be encumbered by an operating system which will only get in my way!

> Most open source projects install without problems (on the right 
> architecture).
> You mean you do not want to think AT ALL?
> ;-)

Not when it comes to installing and using something.  My job is to make 
a product work, not chasing down 200 dependecies.  :-)

You are right though. This has improved.

I prefer not to think.  I like to "be still like broccolli".

> 
> 
>>Why would I want to 
>>spend my time on that.  Most forget that while open source stuff is free 
>>, it may take 4 times the time to use.  This is only cheaper if your 
>>time doesn't cost a whole lot.
> 
> Not correct, it does not 4 times the time to use, makes no sense.
> 

I should have said: "4x the time to get the same useful result".  This 
isn't always true, but when I pay for something I am paying for 
documentation.  When I have to reverse engineer something to get it to 
work right I am wasting my time. And when the docs are skimpy, I get 
angry. This is not true of all open-source software (I love the PHP 
project, I use php for my web scripts!) but most open source projects 
are not that organized.

> 
> 
>>All this being said, I really like the open cores site.  I would use it 
>>for hobby/side projects. As for serious commercial projects, I place 
>>more trust in either my own or paid for IP that is tested and supported.
> 
> 
> Sure, many times I wrote something because it was not there (in Linux).
> that is how the 50+ applications I released under GPL came about.
> If it EXISTED I would not have bothered writing it.
> 
> Sure a HDL library would be nice, if a university has that, maintains
> that, then it will benefit everybody, save you money.
> But if released under GPL-1 the rest of your HDL will likely have to be
> under GPL too.
> So, I have heard they are working on GPL-3 now..... do not know details.
> Software patents should not exist.
> And yes I admit to keeping HDL secret to protect others copying the design.
> It is the last border, the last defense!
> (... capitalism - communism... but maybe we need a synthesis, look at China).
> 
> But wait, somebody will invent the (startrek) replicator, and then what.
> 
> 

Boy, I wish the replicator existed!  Then I could go home. :-)


-ELi

g.wall wrote:
> has anyone in the dig. design and reconfig. computing community looked
> seriously at open source hardware design libraries, working toward a
> hardware paradigm similar to that in the open source software community?
> I am aware of the existence of opencores.org, but this seems like a
> small first step, of which many more could be taken toward improving the
> availability and ease of access and use of open source logic designs.
> does anyone have any thoughts or knowledge or any thing to say about
> an open source hardware paradigm?

One of the reasons behind starting the FpgaC project on sourceforge was
to
head in that direction, especially in terms of reconfigurable computing
at
a hobby level, and small business level as the normal commercial tools
are way out of sight, and everybody has a proprietary IP mindset.

For pure digital design, it's frequently pretty difficult to extract
meaningful
reusable IP, as many cores have such complex interfaces that it's
common
to have difficulty in fitting them into a completely difference
architecture.

For reconfigurable computing, there is a lot of common library code
that
becomes usable with C based varients, particulary in terms of dynamic
reconfiguration, interprocess (hardware threads) communication, and
even
high level device interfaces (drivers) that can be much more easily
reused
in various SoC and reconfigurable projects. Even basic OS services for
reconfigurable computing are in dire need at this point. And compilers
and
loader tools that can handle dynamic partitioning and loadable
segments.
Doing this with ISE and mainstream tools is painful at best.

John

g.wall wrote:
> has anyone in the dig. design and reconfig. computing community looked 
> seriously at open source hardware design libraries, working toward a 
> hardware paradigm similar to that in the open source software community?

Problem 1.

There are ten times as many software designers
as digital hardware designers. The average software guy
is much better at setting up repositories, web sites
and running regression tests than the average hardware guy.
The average hardware guy knows enough HDL to get get by
and maybe enough C language to turn on a circuit board.
Standard software development processes like source control
and code reuse are much less evolved in the hardware area.

Problem 2.

The average software designer couldn't describe
two gates and flip flop in vhdl or verilog.

         -- Mike Treseler

>Problem 2.
> The average software designer couldn't describe
> two gates and flip flop in vhdl or verilog.

does that even matter for "reconfig. computing"?

Should have noted that the FpgaC project is still looking for
additional
developers, and the long term results of this project are still very
open
to change. It would be great to be able to build a comprehensive set of
library that allow typical MPI and posix-threaded applications to build
and dynamically load/run on multiple FPGA platforms. And to mature
the compiler to handle a full traditional C syntax transparently.

I personally would like to see it handle distributed arithmetic
transparently,
so that it handles the data pipelining of high performance applications
well using data flow like strategies. But that is open to the team as a
whole, with inputs from the user community.

air_bits@yahoo.com wrote:
>>Problem 2.
>>The average software designer couldn't describe
>>two gates and flip flop in vhdl or verilog.
> 
> does that even matter for "reconfig. computing"?
> 

The OP asked about open source hardware design libraries,
not reconfig. computing.

        -- Mike Treseler