Fomu Toolchain

Fomu (fomu.im) is an FPGA in your USB port. This repository gathers all the tools you will need to develop for Fomu, and provides them as prebuilt packages for GNU/Linux, Windows or macOS.

Usage

Download the latest release for your platform and extract it somewhere on your disk. Then set your PATH:

• Shell (GNU/Linux, Cygwin/MSYS2/MINGW, MacOS...): export PATH=[path-to-bin]:$PATH
• Powershell (Windows): $ENV:PATH = "[path-to-bin];" + $ENV:PATH
• cmd.exe (Windows): PATH=[path-to-bin];%PATH%

To confirm installation, run a command such as nextpnr-ice40 or yosys.

What's included

Prebuilt packages contain almost everything you'll need for developing software and/or hardware on Fomu:

• open-tool-forge/fpga-toolchain:
  • yosys -- synthesis
  • ghdl-yosys-plugin -- VHDL frontend for Yosys
  • nextpnr -- place-and-route
  • dfu-util -- upload bitstream to the FPGA
  • Find the list of all tools at open-tool-forge/fpga-toolchain: Introduction.
• Extras, specific for Fomu:
  • riscv-gcc -- compile code for RISC-V CPUs, such as the Fomu softcore
  • wishbone-tool -- access the debug bus on Fomu
  • The Windows version includes make and teraterm.

NOTE: fpga-toolchain includes an internal lib/python3.8 interpreter to be used by nextpnr. However, users should install a Python interpreter on their system for using LiteX or other Python based hardware description/design tools.

It is strongly recommended that you install git for managing repositories and checking out code, though it is not strictly necessary.