Exists Open Source FPGA Tool Chain?
sybreon: Writing a synthesis tool is like writing a high-level language compiler, fairly difficult. On top of that, synthesis (by definition) targets a specific technology. This is like targeting different CPU architectures and platforms with said compiler except that the targets are not publicly documented.Even with so many OSS developers in this world, we only have one decent compiler that targets multiple platforms - GCC, and even that has lots of issues. The number of FPGA developers is far smaller and most of us would rather focus on the hardware design, than write software tools.So, if you want to see a good FPGA tool chain, you would need to convince enough FPGA developers with software skills and enough software developers with hardware skills, to put an effort behind actually making it work.