If you have experience of Free Software workflow on PIC microcontrollers (particularly assembler and upload) or FPGA (particularly place-and-route) then please could you let me know on or off list.
Thanks, Mike.
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On 19/10/15 15:21, Michael Dorrington wrote:
Hi Mike,
Not done much with PIC - if they will hide their free tool chain away, then they can't expect me to use it.
On FPGA, have you seen chiphack.org? There was also a talk at ORCONF last week on free EDA tools. Videos should be up very shortly.
HTH,
Jeremy
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On 19/10/15 16:08, Jeremy Bennett wrote:
The Microchip tool chain is non-free. :( On improving my searching, I've found `gputils` which looks to do the job:
* http://gputils.sourceforge.net/ * https://packages.debian.org/jessie/gputils
Anyone on list with experience of it?
There is also a simulator `gpsim`: * http://gpsim.sourceforge.net/ * https://packages.debian.org/jessie/gputils
Again, anyone on list with experience of it?
On FPGA, have you seen chiphack.org? There was also a talk at ORCONF last week on free EDA tools. Videos should be up very shortly.
Are the tools all Free Software?
* Quartus II Web Edition * ModelSim Altera Starter Edition * OpenRISC 1000 toolchain
Particularly, is the place-and-route bit Free Software?
HTH,
It does help, thanks.
Mike.
On 19 October 2015 at 19:04, Michael Dorrington michael.dorrington@member.fsf.org wrote:
All vendor supplied FPGA toolchains are heavily proprietary, as are the configuration bitstream formats of all but one (I forget which vendor provides documents for theirs, but the devices have something like 5 LUTs).
Embecosm will be uploading the talks from ORCONF soon and you need to watch Clifford Wolf's, on Yosys, IceStorm and arachne-pnr.
http://www.clifford.at/yosys/ http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/ https://github.com/cseed/arachne-pnr
Andrew
On 19/10/15 19:20, Andrew Back wrote:
It is a sad state of affairs.
Great links, thanks.
Mike.
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On 19/10/15 19:04, Michael Dorrington wrote:
Hi Mike,
I was particularly referring to their GNU tool chain, which is (by definition) free, but I have always struggled to find the source code.
The backend tools are not free (see comment below). For simulation, ChipHack also addresses the use of Verilator and Icarus Verilog for simulation, but in a 2 day course, we have to some extent to rely on what works out of the box, which is ModelSim embedded in the Quartus tools.
The OpenRISC 1000 tool chain is of course fully open source, as is the source Verilog.
Particularly, is the place-and-route bit Free Software?
No - the talk at ORCONF was the first time anyone has succeeded in building any free and open synthesis tool that works. It was the result of a fantastic reverse engineering exercise by Clifford Wolf, and works for one FPGA chip from one of the smaller FPGA companies.
This isn't going to change much until a FPGA company goes open kimono on its technology. No sign of that anytime soon, although it would be an interesting disruption strategy for one of the smaller players.
Best wishes,
Jeremy
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On 19/10/15 19:27, Jeremy Bennett wrote:
Do Microchip use a modified version of GCC? Looking at the GCC docs it doesn't support PIC microcontrollers, from what I can tell. However GCC does support other microcontrollers.
Good to know there are Free Software simulators available.
The OpenRISC 1000 tool chain is of course fully open source, as is the source Verilog.
This is great.
This is great news. Hope it inspires others.
Hopefully things will get better.
Cheers, Mike.
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On 19/10/15 20:51, Michael Dorrington wrote:
<snip>
IIRC there is a GCC for PIC, but it is not part of the official distribution, and I don't know how good it is. You can find references to it with your favorite search engine. I believe there is also SDCC for PIC.
HTH,
Jeremy
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On 20/10/15 08:38, Jeremy Bennett wrote:
Nothing up to date that I can find. There is picgcc but that looks abandoned.
I believe there is also SDCC for PIC.
I'd looked at SDCC but it says Microchip PIC16 and PIC18 are work in progress but, although not clearly mentioned, it looks to have good support for 14bit PIC. I've seen links recommending SDCC so perhaps it is good enough?
However gputils looks to be a good choice too.
Anyone experience with either of these tools on PIC or other microcontrollers?
Thanks, Mike.
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Andrew Back -
Jeremy Bennett -
Michael Dorrington