MyHDL is participating in the 2018 Google Summer of Code, as a sub-org under the FOSSi organization umbrella.

Go to the MyHDL forum and/or the FOSSi GSoC page and introduce yourself and your interests!

MyHDL Project Introduction

MyHDL is a Python package that extends Python as a hardware description language (HDL). MyHDL empowers implementation of complex digital circuits that can be targeted towards ASIC and FPGA technologies.

Jan Decaluwe is the creator and BDFL. The MyHDL project has been around for many years and has had many successes bringing a modern and software influenced approach to HDL development. MyHDL has been used for various FPGA projects and numerous ASIC projects 1.

The following are good starting points to learn more about MyHDL:

MyHDL Community

The MyHDL forum and the myhdl gitter channel can be used to interact with the MyHDL community. Most questions can be answered in one of these two outlets.

Questions can also be posted to:

The gitter channel is informal and typically a question will be part of a time-limited conversation. On the forum more users/developers will have a chance to comment on the question and the question will receive more feedback over time.

Before a question is posted to the forum or gitter care should be taken to construct a useful question. Simple guidelines for posting questions to the community:

  1. Limit the scope of the questions.
  2. Briefly state what is to be accomplish.
  3. Give a small example embedded in the question.
  4. Clearly state the question in the context of the simplified problem.
  5. It is ok to link original code (or attach) as a reference but it should not be required to answer the question.

Example, don't post code and state: "it doesn't work, help".
Determine where the issues is and create a specific question to the problems independent of the context of the project. The easier the question is to understand and test (e.g removing extraneous information) the faster the question will be answered.

Mentors will be in a position to help dig through the project code. To get the highest probability of a timely and useful answer the above recommendation should be used when posting to the mailing-list.

This exhaustive essay on, interacting and getting questions answered by asking well-thought questions, is a good guide.

Writing Your GSoC Application

A common template is available to help bootstrap the student proposals. For more information on GSoC see the GSoC website in particular the student FAQ is a good place to start for new students and the student guide is a thorough review of the program.

Getting Started with MyHDL

Using MyHDL

The MyHDL manual outlines how to design digital circuits with MyHDL. MyHDL installation instructions thoroughly cover installing the MyHDL package.

The following is a list of additional examples and projects that can be used as first exercises and references:

Contributing to MyHDL Package

The MyHDL project has outlined a development process that should be followed by each participant. This includes writing enhancement proposals for projects that contribute directly to the MyHDL package. Certain project ideas are based on existing MEPs. The student proposal will be natural start to a MEP if needed.

Project Ideas

All projects require programming in Python, previous knowledge of HDL design, and many of the MyHDL specific projects (i.e. non-cores) require experience with compilers (familiarity with the Python compiler package desirable).

MyHDL Package Project Ideas

Digital filter blocks

This project includes developing various digital filters with MyHDL and integrating the filter-blocks with PyFDA. The filter-blocks will be added to the filter-blocks repository. The student is encouraged to start with simple digital filters and use the tools to verify and demonstrate the performance of the filters. After a basic filter or two is completed it is expected the student will complete a more complex digital filter, examples: systolic structure, non-linear estimation filters, modular shared-resource structures, etc.

The potential mentors for this project are:

  1. Christopher L. Felton , cfelton on IRC, @FeltonChris on twitter, and @cfelton on github

  2. Christian Muenker,
    @chipmuenk on github

Interface driven Ethernet core

This project involves extending the Ethernet core that was developed in a previous GSoC to be an "interface driven" design. The core is to be updated and extended with the interfaces provided in the rhea or crux packages.

The following example illustrates the idea of the interface driven design - the details will be developed with the student.

def example(...)
    glbl = Global()         # clock and resets
    ethcfg = EthConfig()    # contains all the setup info
    ethc = EthController()  # main data interface to the eth

    # In this example, there are three blocks that are interfacing
    # with the Ethernet controller.
    b1 = ethc.get_branch()
    pkt1_inst = packet_type_a_handler(...)

    b2 = ethc.get_branch()
    pkt2_inst = packet_type_b_handler(...)


    b3 = ethc.get_branch()
    pkt3_inst = packet_type_c_handler(...)

    eth_inst = eth_core(glbl, ethc, ethcfg)
    # get the arbitration logic, handles
    arb_inst = ethc.arbitrate()

It is desirable, but not required, that the student have a development board with an tri-mode (10/100/1000) Ethernet phy.

  1. Christopher L. Felton , cfelton on IRC, @FeltonChris on twitter, and @cfelton on github