docs: Introduce OpenFPGALoader programming tool #2240
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Hi @mithro! |
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Can you provide some feedback @umarcor ? |
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@acomodi - Any thoughts? |
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@kgugala - Any thoughts on if we can have programming tested using GitHub self hosted runners in the future? |
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Overall, I think that writing some docs about OpenFPGALoader is a good proposal. However, I'm unsure about writing that content in this repo/place. It took me some effort to find that it's going to be served in https://symbiflow.readthedocs.io/projects/arch-defs/en/latest/getting-started.html. The "About" in the sidebar points to https://symbiflow.github.io/, the first paragraph in the readme points to https://github.com/SymbiFlow/symbiflow-examples. It's only the shield/badge the one pointing to the arch-defs docs. Furthermore, this is no exclusive about "developers who want to contribute to architecture definitions" but for "any user or developer of symbiflow who needs to program/configure a board/device". Therefore, I recommend to have this content written in https://github.com/SymbiFlow/symbiflow-examples instead. It's ok to then cross-reference from here. |
docs/source/getting-started.rst
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| Loading the bitstream into an FPGA can be done outside of the Symbiflow with tools that support the target architecture, such as for example `Vivado` or `xc3sprog` for Xilinx 7-Series FPGAs or ``iceprog`` for Lattice iCE40. | |||
| Loading the bitstream into an FPGA can be done outside of the Symbiflow with tools that support the target architecture. A good example is `openFPGALoader` or others such as `Vivado` and `xc3sprog` for Xilinx 7-Series FPGAs or ``iceprog`` for Lattice iCE40. | |||
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I recommend not to add references to other programming tools OR to do it "properly". With proper I mean something such as:
There are multiple tools for loading bitstreams into FPGA development boards. Typically, each tool supports an specific target family or the lines of products of a vendor. Some of the most known are the following:
- Xilinx/Digilent's iMPACT, ChipScope, EDK, Hardware Manager, xc3sprog, etc.
- Lattice's Standalone Programmer.
- OpenOCD.
- dfu-util.
- Icestorm's iceprog.
- IceSugar's icesprog.
- Greg Davill's ecpprog.
- fujprog for ULX2/ULX3.
Fortunately, since 2019, a universal utility named openFPGALoader is being developed, which aims to provide a replacement for most of those. It supports many different boards with FPGAs based on the architectures including xc7, ECP5, iCE40 and many more. It can utilize a variety of the programming adapters based on JTAG, DAP interface, ORBTrace, DFU and FTDI chips.
Moreover, that list might be contributed in https://github.com/hdl/constraints or as a section/tag in https://github.com/hdl/awesome, so that it could be just referenced from here.
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docs/source/getting-started.rst
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| Installing OpenFPGALoader | ||
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| The most reliable way of getting OpenFPGALoader installed on your computer is to |
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I don't think the most reliable way is building a tool from sources. openFPGALoader is available in several packaging solutions (such as containers or MSYS2, see https://github.com/hdl/packages; also hdl/conda-prog#22), and CI generates "nightly" packages (https://github.com/trabucayre/openFPGALoader/releases/tag/nightly). Therefore, I believe the docs in symbiflow should recommend using one of those pre-built solutions, if suitable.
Moreover, instructions about how to build and install openFPGALoader are better contributed in the openFPGALoader repo (https://github.com/trabucayre/openFPGALoader/blob/master/INSTALL.md), since that knowledge is not specific about SymbiFlow. It's ok to explain if some specific setting or variable needs to be used in the context of SymbiFLow.
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I would say from a SymbiFlow perspective the two programming tools we want to support are; I think all the other tools can be ignored and features added to (a) and (b) to cover anything missing. |
Signed-off-by: Paweł Czarnecki <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Paweł Czarnecki <[email protected]>
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LGTM. |
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@kgugla - Can you check this and merge if you also think it looks good? |
This PR introduces a new FPGA programming tool - OpenFPGALoader
It is addressing issue #2237
We are adding a note in the docs with a plan to add a full support for this tool in the future.
Signed-off-by: Paweł Czarnecki [email protected]