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OPENCORES: Tools Introduction OpenCores is a nonprofit organization. We are all enthusiastic individuals believing in a better technical development and lower hardware prices by providing free IP cores. Designing IP cores, is unfortunately not as simple as writing a C program. A lot more steps are needed to verify the cores and to ensure they can be synthesized to different FPGA architectures and various standard cell libraries. At present there are no free tools available that come even close to the maturity level of industry standard tools. As such, we rely heavily on developers who have permission to access these tools through their daytime jobs and on tool manufacturers to provide/sponsor us with various tools. This page provides some guidelines to designers who would like to get development tools, and to companies who would like to support OpenCores and provide tools. Getting tools Any developer who wishes to contribute to OpenCores may request tools. There are no guarantees or promises that tools will be made available. OpenCores administration will act as a liaison between the developers and tools manufacturers to provide a joint common contact. In order to limit the abuse of free tools, this section provides guidelines that must be followed by a designer, before he may request tools. Tools are typically given with a 3-6 month license to use the tools for developing non commercial IP cores for OpenCores, the licenses can be renewed if development is ongoing and we see good progress. Any work resulting from the usage of the tools must be made available free of charge to the public. OpenCores dose not have any legal contracts between itself and the developers and OpenCores does not have the desire to enter in any such agreements. All tools are provided on a good faith basis, and it is up to the developers to make the best use of them. Before a developer can request tools, (s)he must select a project. Once a project has been selected the developer will get access to the OpenCores web site and can create a project web page. The next step is to write a detailed specification for the IP core to be designed. This specification must be complete, including architectural and functional description, register description, IO lists and timing diagrams, as well as a programming model. In addition to the specification a schedule must be provided, which should match the actual development cycle. After all of the above have been provided, please contact oc-team@o... and provide us with a list of tools that you would like, and what platform you use (currently we support Windows and Linux). The OpenCores community will evaluate the specification (it must be made publicly available), and provide feedback to the designer. After all issues have been addressed and we have set up the project, administration will work with the tool vendors to get the appropriate tools. We need tools We are desperately in need of tools. There is a urgent need for simulators, coverage analysis, verification and synthesis tools. We are also looking for FPGA prototyping solutions, including software and hardware. We try to provide some control of how the tools are used and try to limit the abuse of the free tools. We would be very happy to hear from tools vendors, and work with them to establish further guidelines, and address all their concerns. Contact For more information please contact: The OpenCores Team oc-team@o...