Thursday, 2022-03-17

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lkclas95. kenneth: yes i don't (personally) like "competition", i find it... how can i express it... intimidating? yes, you have to go to the effort, only to find that you're not "selected", but if you think about it, this is no different from the commercial MPWs05:20
lkclcommercial MPWs have slots, when they get filled, you go into a queue for the next one.05:20
lkclmithro took some time to explain it last month on the IBM India Power ISA Education Course i participate in: his Managers have agreed to back sky130 as an experiment05:21
lkclif we - as a community - want more MPWs and want more MPWs on the smaller geometries, he needs to demonstrate that there is demand (that the experimental investment has proven so successful it should be expanded)05:22
lkclon that basis, *not* submitting a design "because it might not be accepted" would mean that there would be no visible evidence for the sponsorship to be continued.05:24
lkcli appreciate that's a leetle... indirect :)05:30
F4PGASlackBridge<kenneth.wilke> That's certainly a fair point. I do feel like I'm getting more interested in exploring that each day. The main hesitation for me is much more about lack of experience. I feel like I've got a decent footing with SystemVerilog at this point, but many other things to figure out as well05:31
lkclyes, the difference between signals and wires and registers...05:32
lkcloh if you encounter "variables" in VHDL, those are horribly confusing05:32
F4PGASlackBridge<kenneth.wilke> I have a hard time working up the patience to look at VHDL lol05:33
lkclhaha yeah. i found the microwatt source code to be amazingly readable, though, because it's written by people with software-engineering background05:34
lkclit's like... got comments? :)05:34
F4PGASlackBridge<kenneth.wilke> That's certainly always helpful! I can't really say I've given it a fair shot, just that at a quick glance at VHDL and Verilog the latter appeared much simpler05:35
lkclVHDL is basically ADA, so is more... robust, shall we say05:36
lkclyosys only had SystemVerilog support added quite recently05:36
lkcland if you overwrite signals multiple times, the simulators (particularly icarus verilog) can interpret that as non-deterministic behaviour05:37
lkcltwo processes writing to the same Signal, iverilog "events" could have one of them written before the other, and then on the next cycle, the other process "wins"05:38
F4PGASlackBridge<kenneth.wilke> When I did a little CAPI experiment, I found the typedef keyword extremely friendly for sharing a chunk of data between virtual memory of a C program and the FPGA05:38
lkclnice.05:39
lkcldo you have any references online to that?05:39
F4PGASlackBridge<kenneth.wilke> My "accelerator"s function was to XOR two buffers and save in a third, certainly did not merit the hardware lol05:40
lkcl:)05:40
* lkcl found this https://suchprogramming.com/category/capi-development/page/2/05:40
F4PGASlackBridge<kenneth.wilke> But figuring out the memory ops was a fun journey05:41
F4PGASlackBridge<kenneth.wilke> That's the one05:41
lkclwildcard imports, sigh.05:42
lkclmy heart sinks whenever i see wildcard imports, they stop contextual auto-deduction / autodidact learning stone dead05:43
lkclBufferInterfaceInput and so on are part of CAPI?05:44
lkclah is this OpenCAPI by any chance?05:45
lkclhttps://github.com/KennethWilke/capi-parity/blob/master/capi.sv05:45
F4PGASlackBridge<kenneth.wilke> I don't exactly recall, but I think it was OpenCAPI05:46
* lkcl been meaning to explore OpenCAPI05:46
lkclahhh :)05:46
lkclah excellent, i'll definitely bookmark this, thank you. that's really handy to have a well-documented explanation and exploration05:47
F4PGASlackBridge<kenneth.wilke> I'm glad it could be useful lol, I knew at the time I'd very quickly forget most of what I had learned05:48
lkclbeen there :)05:49
F4PGASlackBridge<kenneth.wilke> I was trying to lure some of my coworkers into the HDL journey, but didn't succeed in encouraging anyone to give it a try05:50
lkclyyeah you have to have a really good reason to consider it05:50
F4PGASlackBridge<kenneth.wilke> Which, I did kind of find that in my last role, which was appsec consulting for a couple years05:51
F4PGASlackBridge<kenneth.wilke> I think the infosec crowd is more willing to dig that deep, generally05:51
lkclmost people have given up to be honest, i find it really... interesting that software engineers exhibit a "resigned" attitude to ISAs05:51
lkclbut yes, security aspects (RowHammer) are where software engineers / programmers are waking up05:52
lkclat least if your peripherals or parts of the design are implemented in an FPGA you can "fix" security issues05:52
F4PGASlackBridge<kenneth.wilke> We did some device security assessments, and I think given enough open source track an FPGA gives some incredible potential for misuse lol05:53
lkclwhich goes a long way towards explaining why both Intel and AMD bought FPGA companies05:53
lkclmmm true :)05:53
lkclwhich, sigh, will be why Intel is highly likely to drop encryption on top of FPGA bitstreams05:54
lkclas if that will help them *cough* master firmware key leaked *cough*05:54
F4PGASlackBridge<kenneth.wilke> One of the fun talks a colleague gave was "pin 2 pwn", which was bypassing secure boot with a sewing needle. Causing bad flash reads and hoping the device hits some failover debug prompt if I recall correctly.05:56
F4PGASlackBridge<kenneth.wilke> I told him we could time the interference really well with an FPGA!05:57
lkclfunny. i remember talking to someone online who had experience with using.. what was it... a directional EMP to deliberately cause bit-flips inside FFs/registers05:57
lkclgot a FF which says "nope, you can't write to that security-controlled memory area ZAP oh wait now you can"05:58
F4PGASlackBridge<kenneth.wilke> I admire the people that break things creatively :)05:59
lkclit seriously freaks people out who think "hardware is categorically secure"05:59
lkclhey fun as this has been i am keenly aware it's 6am at the moment here in the UK and i really should be horizontal06:00
F4PGASlackBridge<kenneth.wilke> Yeah, I enjoyed chatting with you, have a good one!06:01
lkclappreciate the entertaining conversation. you too.06:01
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