Is it possible to implement the current Rocket Chip Github respo on FPGAs other than Artix-7

Question

I am totally new to the RISC-V domain. I am targeting to implement the Rocket Chip core on my FPGA as a module of a bigger project.

As far as I know, SiFive is a supplier for the Rocket Chip. To my knowledge, SiFive makes all its cores implementable only on Xilinx Artix-7 FPGAs. Yet, I am wondering if it is possible to implement it on other FPGAs (Eg. Xilinx Virtex 7 or Zynq)?

If yes, would that require some further modifications of any kind? Or I am fine with the regular flow demonstrated on Github?

Thanks.

Answer 1

LiteX has support for building SoCs around the Rocket core on a range of platforms. It has been tested on both Xilinx FPGAs and Lattice ECP5.

https://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~somlo/BTCP/ is a description of this flow aimed primarily at the Versa ECP5 development board. But LiteX supports a range of other platforms including some Virtex and Zynq boards.

BTW, Rocket-Chip is not (just) a SiFive project, it was originally developed by Berkeley and is now maintained by Chips Alliance.

Answer 2

Originally, Rocket Chip was supported for Zynq FPGAs: https://github.com/ucb-bar/fpga-zynq

That repo is deprecated and no longer supported, but perhaps something useful can be gleamed from it.

Answer 3

I managed to implement 32-bit single tiny core over Xilinx VC-709 board Virtex-7 fpga for baremetal. I'm pretty sure you can implement bigger core with linux image. Modification as per your requirement is not that tough.Just learn chisel and go through with interfaces and architecture. On hardware side just need knowledge of dpi interface and design flow for fpga.