Install Required CAD tools

We use yosys for Verilog file parsing and ghdl-yosys-plugin for VHDL file parsing. As a result yosys must be installed in order for FABulous to work. If you want to work with VHDL then having both dependency is a must.

You can automatically install the above packages with the following command:

FABulous install-oss-cad-suite

This will install the oss-cad-suit for you which will install all the non-required CAD tools, such as nextpnr-generic and simulators, which save you the trouble of installing other tools.

Note

If you just want to install yosys using apt, make sure you have at least Ubuntu 23.10 (24.04 for the LTS versions) installed to meet the above requirement.

Otherwise, you will need to install the CAD tools yourself. An added benefit is all the

Installing Non required CAD tools

To perform synthesis, place and route and simulation you will need the following software:

• Verilog:

  • yosys

  • nextnpr-generic

  • iverilog

• VHDL:

  • yosys

  • ghdl-yosys-plugin

  • nextnpr-generic

  • ghdl

As mentioned in the previous section, using the FABulous install-oss-cad-suite will install all the required software.

Note

For GHDL we suggest using the mcode backend, as the simulation time is short using the mcode backend then any other backend. If you are a Mac user, the mcode backend is not available, and we recommend going with the llvm-jit backend instead.