Here are the instructions to setup Silice from scratch. Once done, head out to writing your first design or try our example projects.
We will first compile Silice and then compile or install the Open Source tools we will be using to synthesize a working design from a Silice code. We will also install the tools to directly program the boards.
The instructions depend on your target platform, please follow the links below.
The shell PATH has to include Silice/bin for proper operation. Under a bash shell, this can be set with export PATH=$PATH:<path-to-silice>/Silice/bin where <path-to-silice> is to be replaced with the path on your system.
The build system also expects all tools to be available from the PATH: yosys, nextpnr, etc. (under Windows / MinGW64 this is done automatically using the recommended setup).
Once everything is installed, let's run a couple tests:
From a shell starting from the silice folder:
cd projects
cd divstd_bare
make icarus
You should the following Window open and this as the last line in the console:
20043 / 41 = 488
Yes! The integer hardware division is working.
The window is gtkwave, which is opened on the result of the simulation using icarus Verilog.
For fun, you might want to select > top in the left panel, then double click on clk in the list that appears in the bottom part of the panel. Finally click on the left-most magnifier icon. This reveals the clock signal! This is extremely useful to explore the signals in your design and verify that it works as intended.
Now we are going to test simulation with Verilator. This compiles the design into an executable that can simulate much faster than icarus.
From a shell starting from the silice folder:
cd projects
cd vga_demo
make verilator
This executes the simulation, which opens a window showing the graphical output. It also outputs the last frame (tga format) in the subdirectory BUILD_verilator.
