Revision as of 20:57, 2 March 2009

Work is in progress to write a feature request for FEL

Feature Name

Fedora Electronic Lab

Summary

Fedora Electronic Lab is Fedora's high-end hardware design and simulation platform. This platform provides different hardware design flows based on the semiconductor industry's current trend. FEL maps in new design, simulation and verification methodologies with opensource EDA software.

This page is a feature request to FESCo with respect to the work done behind the Fedora Electronic Lab.

FEL's website : http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/FEL/

Definitions

Below are terms used in this page which has other meanings in a normal opensource software community. These definitions are to prevent any misunderstandings from any side.

EDA Software : a design or simulation tool that can be compiled into a RPM package
Package : Mechanical body that envelops a chip

Owner

Name: Chitlesh Goorah
email: < chitlesh [AT] fedoraproject DOT org>

Current status

Targeted release: Fedora 42
Last updated: 2 March 2009
Percentage of completion: 90%
The precise percentage of completion is listed on this gantt diagram

Detailed Description

FEL bridges 2 different opensource communities :

opensource software community
opensource hardware community

After 3 consecutive and successive releases, FEL/Fedora is regarded as the Leader in this field by both communities.

Below entails the highlights of the major development items to put the quality barrier higher than the previous releases:

Perl modules to extend vhdl and verilog support. These perl modules together with rawhide's gtkwave improves chip testing support.
Introduction of Verilog-AMS modeling into ngspice
Improved VHDL debugging support with gcov.
Improved support for re-usable HDL packages as IP core
Improved PLI support on both iverilog and ghdl
Introduction of C-based methodologies for HDL testbenches and models.
Improved co-simulation based hardware design.
Introduction of design tools for DSP design flow

Benefit to Fedora

Fedora benefits from FEL in various ways as FEL extends Fedora's commitments to the hardware design community.

The Fedora Project during the last 3 Fedora releases has established its roots deep into the opensource EDA community as a robust and successful opensource EDA provider. With this fourth FEL release, Fedora Electronic Lab userbase is now

Students/researchers
Lecturers
Analog/Digital/Mixed Signal hardware designers (even Test engineers)
System Electronic Engineers
Project Coordinators
New opensource EDA developers
Field application engineers (who have never heard of FEL)
...(but not software geeks)

FEL brings something unique that is missing in the opensource software community : a community that helps to foster EDA software development and support opensource EDA community.

Thereby, FEL is not a --package-only-EDA-tools-- community, but has a clear goal to strengthen the opensource EDA community, in terms of marketing, design methodologies, design flows,..

Fedora is the Leader and Expert in opensource EDA software deployment.

Scope

FEL is the leader and expert in the opensource EDA community. Unlike other similar projects, FEL is an EDA solutions provider rather than a random EDA software provider. FEL's solutions include design tools that fit into hardware design methodologies and meet interoperability between other design tools in the design flows.

Those solutions also extend to support opensource EDA software development and existing opensource EDA software community.

FEL will focus on increasing its current quality barrier to match current semiconductor industry's needs.

How To Test

1. FEL is and should be computer hardware independent.

2. No additional system setup is required to satisfy a basic design flow

3. Each EDA software includes its examples and can be used to tell each tool individually. Perl modules bundled for hardware development have undergone self-testing during their builds, i.e %make check

User Experience

Without FEL, users are on their own to deduce a proper design flow with the proper tools for each stage of the design flow. Only a couple of users using opensource design tools succeed in completing a hardware project with opensource tools.

FEL comes to solve this issue. The latest methodology included on FEL platform is the means for verifications and debugging for digital based designs.

Kickstart File

http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=spin-kickstarts.git;a=blob_plain;f=fedora-livedvd-electronic-lab.ks;hb=HEAD

ISO Name / FS Label

* Fedora-%{ver}-%{arch}-Live-FEL
* LiveDVD

Dependencies

none

Contingency Plan

There is no need for backup plan as the work done behind FEL-11 is only to improve hardware design experience and expand FEL targeted userbase to Test & Verification Engineers.

Documentation

Each design tool includes its own documentation. Design methodologies are listed on FEL's website:

http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/FEL/

Release Notes