To properly represent a negation of a signed X-bit quantity we may, in
general, need a signed (X+1)-bit signal — for example, negation of
3-bit -4 is 4, which is not representable in signed 3 bits.
The redesign introduces no fundamental incompatibilities, but it does
involve minor breaking changes:
* The simulator commands were moved from hdl.ast to back.pysim
(instead of only being reexported from back.pysim).
* back.pysim.DeadlineError was removed.
Summary of changes:
* The new simulator compiles HDL to Python code and is >6x faster.
(The old one compiled HDL to lots of Python lambdas.)
* The new simulator is a straightforward, rigorous implementation
of the Synchronous Reactive Programming paradigm, instead of
a pile of ad-hoc code with no particular design driving it.
* The new simulator never raises DeadlineError, and there is no
limit on the amount of delta cycles.
* The new simulator robustly handles multiclock designs.
* The new simulator can be reset, such that the compiled design
can be reused, which can save significant runtime with large
designs.
* Generators can no longer be added as processes, since that would
break reset(); only generator functions may be. If necessary,
they may be added by wrapping them into a generator function;
a deprecated fallback does just that. This workaround will raise
an exception if the simulator is reset and restarted.
* The new simulator does not depend on Python extensions.
(The old one required bitarray, which did not provide wheels.)
Fixes#28.
Fixes#34.
Fixes#160.
Fixes#161.
Fixes#215.
Fixes#242.
Fixes#262.
Otherwise, two subfragments with the same local clock domain would
not be able to drive its clock or reset signals. This can be easily
hit if using two ResetSynchronizers in one module.
Fixes#265.
$verilog_initial_trigger was introduced to work around Verilog
simulation semantics issues with `always @*` statements that only
have constants on RHS and in conditions. Unfortunately, it breaks
Verilator. Since the combination of proc_prune and proc_clean passes
eliminates all such statements, it can be simply removed when both
of these passes are available, currently on Yosys master. After
Yosys 0.10 is released, we can get rid of $verilog_initial_trigger
entirely.
This warning is usually quite handy, but is problematic in tests:
although it can be suppressed by using Fragment.get on elaboratable,
that is not always possible, in particular when writing tests for
exceptions raised by __init__, e.g.:
def test_wrong_csr_bus(self):
with self.assertRaisesRegex(ValueError, r"blah blah"):
WishboneCSRBridge(csr_bus=object())
In theory, it should be possible to suppress warnings per-module
and even per-line using code such as:
import re, warnings
from nmigen.hdl.ir import UnusedElaboratable
warnings.filterwarnings("ignore", category=UnusedElaboratable,
module=re.escape(__name__))
Unfortunately, not only is this code quite convoluted, but it also
does not actually work; we are using warnings.warn_explicit() because
we collect source locations on our own, but it requires the caller
to extract the __warningregistry__ dictionary from module globals,
or warning suppression would not work. Not only is this not feasible
in most diagnostic sites in nMigen, but also I never got it to work
anyway, even when passing all of module, registry, and module_globals
to warn_explicit().
Instead, use a magic comment at the start of a file to do this job,
which might not be elegant but is simple and practical. For now,
only UnusedElaboratable can be suppressed with it, but in future,
other linter parameters may become tweakable this way.
We don't have any other convenient shortcut for x[off*w:(off+1)*w],
but using word_select to extract a single static range would result
in severe bloat of emitted code through expansion to dead branches.
Recognize and simplify this pattern.
It turns out that while Python does not import _private identifiers
when using * imports, it does nevertheless import all submodules.
Avoid polluting the namespace in the prelude by explicitly listing
all exported identifiers.
