Since I tested FPGA development tools on Ubuntu 20.04, there have been requests for more posts on FPGA tooling. In this post, I provide a quick guide to building an open-source FPGA toolchain for iCE40 boards, such as iCEBreaker. I plan to cover ECP5 FPGAs in a future version. This guide is designed for Ubuntu or Pop!_OS 20.04, but should be straightforward to adjust to your own distro. These instructions will work on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), but there’s no USB support in WSL, so you can’t program boards under WSL. Read more

In this post, I test common FPGA tools for compatibility with Ubuntu 20.04 (AKA Focal Fossa), and my regular desktop OS: Pop!_OS 20.04. These tests are in no way exhaustive: I have tried using the applications as I usually do to exercise the main functionality. I have also included instructions for building the tools from source when available. This is my final planned update for this post (July 2020). Tested: IceStorm Tools, nextpnr, nMigen, Verilator, Vivado, Yosys Incomplete: Quartus Updated 2020-07-30. Read more