bust bus tool

Utility for simply creating and modifying VHDL bus slave modules.

Concept

The main goal of the project is to able to automatically create and modify VHDL bus slave modules based on a simple definition format. By employing VHDL records the handling of the registers can be completely hidden in a module separate from the rest of the design. Every supported bus protocol is a thin wrapper (an "endpoint") around a small protocol-agnostic local bus, so the register-map logic stays the same regardless of bus. The hardware side references each field by name through to_hw/from_hw records, with software/hardware access modes and side effects (read/write clear/set, single-pulse, hardware set/clear, enumerated values) described in the JSON.

Bus support

bust currently supports these bus standards:

• AXI4-lite
• IPBus
• SBI (Simple Bus Interface, as used by UVVM)
• Avalon-MM
• Wishbone
• APB (AMBA APB)

Requirements

bust is tested on python 3.9, 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, 3.13 and 3.14.

bust does NOT support python 2.7 and neither should you!

Getting Started

Install the latest release by using pip:

pip install bust

pip skips pre-releases (alpha, beta and release candidates) unless you ask for them. To try the newest pre-release:

pip install --pre bust

Usage

bust FILE [-o DIR]

bust --version

bust -h | --help

Examples

The examples folder contains JSON files for the bus types supported. The files are human-readable to the point that you can create your own from this template alone. The folder also contains the output files generated based on the JSON files.

Simulation

bust does not generate simulator-specific run scripts. There are too many simulators and flows to pick a one-size-fits-all approach, so compiling and running the output is left to you. The repository's own simulation (under sim/) exists only to verify that bust itself works and that the generated example designs simulate; it is not a user-facing flow.

The generated testbenches use UVVM - which can be cloned from their GitHub page - and, for IPBus, the vip_ipbus VIP.

IPBus

IPBus requires the bus package file from the IPBus firmware repo and the custom IPBus BFM repo.

See the example files for how you point to the specific folders.

Latest Development Version (Bleeding Edge)

To run bust from a clone of the repository, see the development setup in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Release Notes

Release notes are in CHANGELOG.md, and each release is on the Releases page.

Contributing

If you have ideas on how to improve the project, please review CONTRIBUTING.md for details. Note that we also have a Code of Conduct.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 - see LICENSE for details.