Chisel (programming language)

Last updated
Constructing Hardware in a Scala Embedded Language (Chisel)
Chisel(ProgrammingLanguage)Logo.svg
Paradigms Multi-paradigm: concurrent, functional, imperative, object-oriented
Family Scala
Developer University of California, Berkeley
First appearedJune 2012;13 years ago (2012-06)
Stable release
3.6.0 / April 14, 2023;2 years ago (2023-04-14)
Typing discipline Inferred, static, strong, structural
Scope Lexical (static)
Implementation language Scala
Platform Java virtual machine (JVM)
JavaScript (Scala.js)
LLVM (Scala Native) (experimental)
License Apache License 2.0
Website www.chisel-lang.org

Chisel (an acronym for Constructing Hardware in a Scala Embedded Language [1] ) is an open-source hardware description language (HDL) used to describe digital electronics and circuits at the register-transfer level. [2] [3]

Contents

Chisel is based on Scala as a domain-specific language (DSL). Chisel inherits the object-oriented and functional programming aspects of Scala for describing digital hardware. Using Scala as a basis allows describing circuit generators. High quality, free access documentation exists in several languages. [4]

Circuits described in Chisel can be converted to a description in Verilog for synthesis and simulation.

Code examples

A simple example describing an adder circuit and showing the organization of components in Module with input and output ports:

classAddextendsModule{valio=IO(newBundle{vala=Input(UInt(8.W))valb=Input(UInt(8.W))valy=Output(UInt(8.W))})io.y:=io.a+io.b}

A 32-bit register with a reset value of 0:

valreg=RegInit(0.U(32.W))

A multiplexer is part of the Chisel library:

valresult=Mux(sel,a,b)

Use

Although Chisel is not yet a mainstream hardware description language, it has been explored by several companies and institutions. The most prominent use of Chisel is an implementation of the RISC-V instruction set, the open-source Rocket chip. [5] Chisel is mentioned by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as a technology to improve the efficiency of electronic design, where smaller design teams do larger designs. [6] Google has used Chisel to develop a Tensor Processing Unit for edge computing. [7] Some developers prefer Chisel as it requires one-fifth as much code and is much faster to develop than Verilog. [8]

Circuits described in Chisel can be converted to a description in Verilog for synthesis and simulation using a program named FIRRTL. [9] [ better source needed ]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Bachrach, J.; Vo, H.; Richards, B.; Lee, Y.; Waterman, A.; Avižienis, R.; Wawrzynek, J.; Asanović, K. (June 2012). "Chisel: constructing hardware in a Scala embedded language" . Proceedings of the 49th Annual Design Automation Conference (DAC 2012). San Francisco, California, US: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). pp. 1216–25. doi:10.1145/2228360.2228584. ISBN   978-1-4503-1199-1.
  2. ↑ "Chisel". people.eecs.berkeley.edu. California, U.S.: University of California, Berkeley. Archived from the original on 2021-10-16. Retrieved 2020-07-08.
  3. ↑ Bachrach, Jonathan (ed.). "Chisel: Accelerating Hardware Design" (PDF). RISC-V . California, U.S.: RISC-V International.
  4. ↑ Schoeberl, Martin (August 30, 2019). Digital Design with Chisel (in English, Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese) (2nd ed.). Kindle Direct Publishing. ISBN   978-1689336031.
  5. ↑ Asanović, Krste; et al. "rocket-chip". GitHub. RISC-V International. Retrieved 11 November 2016.
  6. ↑ Moore, Samuel K. (2018-07-16). "DARPA Plans a Major Remake of U.S. Electronics". IEEE Spectrum. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  7. ↑ Derek Lockhart, Stephen Twigg, Ravi Narayanaswami, Jeremy Coriell, Uday Dasari, Richard Ho, Doug Hogberg, George Huang, Anand Kane, Chintan Kaur, Tao Liu, Adriana Maggiore, Kevin Townsend, Emre Tuncer (2018-11-16). Experiences Building Edge TPU with Chisel . Retrieved 2020-06-10.
  8. ↑ "XiangShan open-source 64-bit RISC-V processor to rival Arm Cortex-A76 - CNX Software". CNX Software - Embedded Systems News. 2021-07-05. Retrieved 2022-03-26.
  9. ↑ "Chisel/FIRRTL Hardware Compiler Framework" . Retrieved 2022-09-08.
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