A SiFive University Presentation

Hacking Silicon for Fun

(instead of profit)

Or, How to do precision farming on Mars

Troy Benjegerdes

Farming, linux, and occasional rocket-chip scientist

What's this farmer doing with silicon?

Where's my reprap (or self-repairing tractor)

I can grow soybeans in soil, and save the seeds. Corn makes PLA, and I can print parts for a 3-D printer to print a bigger printer to make a mold to replace the broken part in my tractor to plant more corn to grow more PLA

Still needs a CPU

Both the tractor and the printer need a processor. I don't have a spare $30 million to buy the local silicon foundry (fab).

But some fabs might have idle production capacity (SkyWater Technology)?

High level hardware design (frameworks)

• Python
  http://www.myhdl.org/
• Scala
  https://github.com/SpinalHDL
• Chisel
  https://github.com/sifive/freedom/
• Craft
  https://github.com/sifive/soc-freedom-sifive

Old-school HDL

(newer is not always better, especially if you care about 30 years from now)

• Verilog (lots of stuff on opencores)
• VHDL hacking microwatt
• SystemVerilog

Tools

• QFlow
• Yosys
• Magic VLSI
• icarus verilog
• SPICE
• KiCAD

<Insert E300/E500  yosys layout here>

Business

Ecosystems

• SiFive
• Beaglebone
• Arduino
• Raspberry Pi
• Efabless
• 7elements
• Crowdsupply
• OpenCompute
  • Google
  • Facebook
  • Intel
  • LOTS MORE