Documentation

Setting Up Infrastructure

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Software Setup and Usage

For Windows users, there is a specific guide for setting WSL2 to use all of the required course software, which can be found here.

We have several big pieces of software that we use in 6.205. You need access to all of them and should go through the installation steps below for each:

  • iVerilog: The open-source SystemVerilog implementation used to simulate and test many of our digital designs!
  • Cocotb: A python-based testing environment that we'll use to make simulating our designs easy and satisfying.
  • GTKWave/Surfer/Oboe (Waveform Viewers): How to View Waveforms from Simulations.
  • openFPGAloader: An open-source cross-platform bit-file flasher which we use to get our designs on our FPGA!
  • Vivado: The propietary software we use to generate our digital designs for actual deployment on an FPGA.
  • PulseView (don't need this until Week 2 so don't sweat doing now): A piece of software we'll use to monitor real-life signals in and around our FPGA. Hold off on this until week 2.

(System)Verilog References