FPGA, ASIC tools on Nix

This repository is inspired by how nix-matlab works. Most packages here are not kept in the Nix store. They are instead installed somewhere else, and the packages here are capable of calling the target executables in FHS environment.

Available packages

Currently supporting: ISE, Vivado, Quartus, Questa.

ISE
Vivado
Quartus
QuestaSim / ModelSim

Installing software

To install any of the available software, you will first want to run the installer of the software in its fhs shell environment. These are called {sw}-shell. For example, to install Quartus, you would do

nix run github:Rutherther/nix-fpga#quartus-shell

Then go about the installation manually and install wherever.

After the installation, it's important to configure where is Quartus installed. The FHS scripts are sourcing ~/.config/quartus/nix.sh file, and assuming INSTALL_DIR is the location of the installation. Specify the whole path including the folder with version of the software, ie.

INSTALL_DIR=/opt/IntelFPGA/quartus/23.1std_lite

Running software

You can either run the software manually from the shell, or run the package version that starts the main program of the toolchain.

Ie. to run quartus, you would do nix run github:Rutherther/nix-fpga#quartus. To run the shell, you would follow what was done for the installation, nix run github:Rutherther/nix-fpga#quartus-shell. All vendor scripts will be sourced, bins added to $PATH, so the software may be ran directly.

The main package also usually has more executables inside of its binary folder, these are all wrapper scripts that call the FHS environment. If you want to use these, you would typically add the package to your path in your shell and that will add all executables to your $PATH.

Udev rules

If you want to flash the FPGA, you will need udev rules installed. These cannot be installed the same way as on other Linux systems via vendor's installation scripts. Instead, udev rules are copied to this repository, and made available via {sw}-udev-rules. For example quartus-udev-rules. These have to be put into services.udev.packages of your NixOS configuration to make connection with board possible.

Licensing

To provide the correct license to the software, I suggest using the configuration script. This script is sourced, so you can just put in export LM_LICENSE_FILE line that will set path to the license

Software specifics

How the configuration should look like, what options can be used etc.

Quartus

I was not able to test the udev rules for quartus as I do not have Intel board on hand.

> cat ~/.config/quartus/nix.sh
INSTALL_DIR=/opt/IntelFPGA/quartus/23.1std_lite

Questa

The Questa package allows to add dummy network interface. This allows license for any interface to work fine. It also bypasses the network check that has to be performed normally. To enable this bypass, override the package like so:

quartus.override {
    licenseInterface = "AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF"; # put interface from the license instead.
};

Alternatively you can set this licenseInterface to true, and configure via $LICENSE_INTERFACE variable declared inside of the nix.sh configuration file.

This will also mean internet cannot be used inside of Questa, but to my knowledge it doesn't use internet in normal usage at all.

> cat ~/.config/questa/nix.sh
INSTALL_DIR=/opt/IntelFPGA/quartus/23.1std_lite/questa_fse
LICENSE_INTERFACE=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF # Do not forget to override with `licenseInterface = true;`
export LM_LICENSE_FILE=/path/to/my/license.dat

ISE

Working with Platform Cable II. Hopefully should work also with other cables.

> cat ~/.config/ise/nix.sh
INSTALL_DIR=/opt/Xilinx/ISE/14.7/ISE_DS

Vivado

Working with Digilent board.

> cat ~/.config/vivado/nix.sh
INSTALL_DIR=/opt/Xilinx/Vivado/2023.1

Rutherther / nix-fpga