The Lack of Open Tooling for FPGAs

I've had similar needs but couldn't find an existing tool, nor a parser on which to build. There are some open source parsers [0], but they don't seem to do preprocessing and hence lose a lot of context.

So I made a parser that might work for your use-case given some work:

https://github.com/svstuff/systemverilog

It works for some fairly big codebases, so I know it's not completely broken. I'm not very proud of the scala code, it's quite ugly in places. But at least there are some tests :p

[0]: this also seems active worth checking out: https://github.com/gburdell/parser

EDIT: added link to other parser.

I've been wondering recently how viable it would be to implement an FPGA-within-an-FPGA:

  * Create a model of a simple, open FPGA.
  * Create tools to support the open FPGA.
  * Synthesize the FPGA for an existing proprietary FPGA.
  * Install bitstream in SPI NOR.
  * Ignore the proprietary FPGA from now on - work with the open FPGA that's inside it.

Yes, it would be absurdly inefficient. However, you can buy pretty huge FPGAs for very little these days. If the ratio of host:target LUTs isn't too bad, and you can find constructs which synthesize efficiently, it might yield something usable.

Perhaps it could be a way of bootstrapping an "open" FPGA effort.

Sure, ASICs are always going to beat FPGAs and CPUs in power consumption for the same task, but there are also applications where the ability to update the system far outweigh the power requirements.

Interestingly, SDR is being used for the UK's small scale digital radio station trials this year. Off the shelf SDR hardware appears to be performing well enough at a lower cost than bespoke DAB hardware. Again, this fits in with your base station category.

You're right about timing attacks, I have no idea what I was thinking there. Would they be better for power analysis attacks? I guess if we're concerned about that then we'll end up back at ASICs again.

OP here

I get there is a big difference between hardware and software, but I feel that certain parts of the gaps are closing. They will not CLOSE, but as they get closer we can learn from each other.

With that said, to address your point: Linux is one of the most dominant systems for servers. Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc use it for almost all of their backend systems. They use it not just because it is free but because it is proven and scalable. Open source databases and web servers also enjoy considerable (sometimes dominant) share. There are companies that provide support contracts for Linux (Suse, Redhat) and that model has worked to fund other open software.

So I think that establishes that a company will use open software.

As for being scary, you are correct that is a primary decision making motivation. It is why many professionals in tons of industries still run windows XP. Often they NEED XP because the software they rely on is so dependent on that specific ecosystem that huge rewrites are necessary in order for it to work on anything else, and this work (even if done by the original distributor) will take years for the tools to be stable again. This is not good engineering on the part of the tool designers. The crippling fear of NEVER TOUCHING ANYTHING is something that the open software alternatives seem to be alleviating in corporate environments since the late 90s.

The lifecycles of putting a phone together is much faster than Intel designing a processor, or Xilinx designing a new FPGA. building boards in phones and laptops is a complex game of Lego and placing them around so the timing diagrams work in all expected use cases. And if the timing does not work in some cases, whatever, people get a phone a year. Hell on my Galaxy S3 Verizon said 'oh yeah that is a known issue where sometimes the GPS just does not work because of loose wires, that was fixed in the S4, I think, which is only $$$.'

You are also correct about direct support from the company. In face make Xilinx enough money and they will share their secrets with you. But I am more targeting small to medium development. If open tools become popular and stable enough to get market share in hobbyist up to medium sized companies, it will only be so many years before bigger companies hire new engineers who grew up using open tools and have no patience for tools that have to be emulated in windows XP and have 35 nested sub menus for enabling a feature.

I do not feel attacked at all. You brought up interesting points. I hope i did them justice and did not ramble since there were a lot of points to hit.

If there's so much value there, how are these companies stopping internal espionage? If a company wanted to see what their competitors were doing to gain a large advantage, they could certainly field a candidate to work as an agent for their competitor. It sounds like how Nikon doesn't document the NEF format and pretends their binaries are the only way to decode such files. Except obviously the secrets these hardware companies have is far more than a simple RAW format.