xilinx-lava

A Haskell library for combinator-based design of systems, especially digital hardware.

Tested with GHC versions 9.4.8 and 9.8.2.

xilinx-lava is library that implements a domain specific language (DSL) digital hardware design, originally developed at Xilinx for producing FPGA designs with high-level layout information. The current version produces generic SystemVerilog code that can be used for any kind of digital hardware design project.

Install pre-requisites

To install Lava first install the Haskell compiler GHC from any version from 9.4.8 to 9.8.2 inclusive (the versions tested by GitHub CI), and the cabal Haskell package manager. One easy way you can install GHC and cabal is by using the ghcup tool. If you are not sure which version to install, pick 9.8.2. Also install cabal using ghcup (pick the latest, recommended version).

The Lava DSL provides the capability to simulate synchronous circuits with a single clock. The simulate SystemVerilog circuits generated from Lava you will need to have a SystemVerilog simulator installed on your system. Lava provides built in support for Verilator, a freely available SystemVerilog simulator. On Linux you can install it with:

$ sudo apt-get install verilator

On Mac OS X you can install it with Homebrew:

$ brew install verilator

Check the major version number of verilator is at least 5. If your OS/platform only has install pacakages for an older version of verilator then you will need to build verilator the source.

$ verilator --version
Verilator 5.012 2023-06-13 rev (Debian 5.012-1)

Installation with cabal

If you want to just use Lava you can install it with the cabal package manager:

$ cabal install xilinx-lava

Installation from source

Alternatively, the instructions below detail how to build the latest version of xilinx-lava from the source code at GitHub. This is what you will want to do if you want to work on the development of Lava.

First, clone the xilinx-lava repo.

$ git clone [email protected]:satnam6502/xilinx-lava.git

Then move into the directory and run the tests. This will cause xilinx-lava to be built and installed and the tests will make sure the installtion was successful.

$ cd xilinx-lava
$ cabal test
...
Completed    bitvec-1.1.5.0 (lib)
Configuring test suite 'test-verilator' for xilinx-lava-6.0.0.0..
Preprocessing test suite 'test-verilator' for xilinx-lava-6.0.0.0..
Building test suite 'test-verilator' for xilinx-lava-6.0.0.0..
[1 of 1] Compiling Main             ( test-verilator/Main.hs, /home/satnam/xilinx-lava/dist-newstyle/build/x86_64-linux/ghc-9.8.2/xilinx-lava-6.0.0.0/t/test-verilator/build/test-verilator/test-verilator-tmp/Main.o )
[2 of 2] Linking /home/satnam/xilinx-lava/dist-newstyle/build/x86_64-linux/ghc-9.8.2/xilinx-lava-6.0.0.0/t/test-verilator/build/test-verilator/test-verilator
Running 1 test suites...
Test suite test-verilator: RUNNING...
Test suite test-verilator: PASS
Test suite logged to:
/home/satnam/xilinx-lava/dist-newstyle/build/x86_64-linux/ghc-9.8.2/xilinx-lava-6.0.0.0/t/test-verilator/test/xilinx-lava-6.0.0.0-test-verilator.log
1 of 1 test suites (1 of 1 test cases) passed.

The Hackage page for xilinx-lava is at https://hackage.haskell.org/package/xilinx-lava.