donn / swiftlog

An IcarusVerilog VPI bridge for the Swift Programming Language.

Swiftlog

Swiftlog is a Swift bridge for IcarusVerilog's VPI (PLI 2.0).

A Swiftier API is in the works, but ~all~ of your logic can be written in Swift!

Usage

Make a folder with your VPI module's name. Copy all verilog modules inside, and make sure all includes use that folder as root (i.e. `include "Mux.v", not `include "SwiftlogExample/Mux.v").

Create a file called Startup.swift, and use this template:

///@SWIFTLOG: <Verilog File To Simulate Here>
import Swiftlog
import VPIAssistant

@_cdecl("swiftlog_startup")
func startup() {
    //Initialize here...
}

Then set up your procedures where it says initialize here.

An example has been provided, to run it, just write ./simulate SwiftlogExample. If all goes well, you should see.

    Hello from Verilog!
    ...and Hello from Swift!
    Result: 999

Your clock should be coming from Verilog, and you should provide update functions as such.

Requirements

You need Swift 5.0, which you can get from Swift.org, and add it to the PATH. On macOS, that means Xcode and the Xcode commandline tools must be active.

macOS

As a result of the changes to Swift library locations, only macOS 10.15 Catalina is supported. (Sorry.)

You need the latest version of Xcode and IcarusVerilog headers installed to /usr/local/lib. To do that, we just recommend using the Homebrew package manager.

    brew install icarus-verilog

Ubuntu

Other than Swift, you'll just need Clang and IcarusVerilog.

    sudo apt install clang iverilog

License

GNU General Public License v2 or (at your option), any later version. Check 'LICENSE'.

*Please note that this licensing option was not my choice- it's simply because IcarusVerilog (and every free and open source Verilog simulator, for that matter) is under either GPLv2 or GPLv3 and Swiftlog links against them.

References

[1] S. Sutherland. The Verilog PLI Handbook: A User's Guide and Comprehensive Reference on the Verilog Programming Language Interface (2nd ed.) 2002666.