Lattice Diamond

From ArchWiki

Lattice Diamond is a design software for Lattice FPGA architectures.

Arch Linux is not officially supported by Lattice Diamond, but as happens with other HDL suites like Xilinx ISE WebPACK or Xilinx Vivado, most of its features can be used with a bit of hacking.

Installation

Install lattice-diamondAUR. Note that the installation size is around 4 GB, so generating the package might take some time due to the compression stage. If you want to shorten building the package, edit the PKGBUILD file to avoid compressing it.

Licensing

You can request a free license to Lattice Semiconductor (registration needed). These licenses are node-locked (tied to the MAC of your Ethernet card). Once you have the license file, copy it to /usr/local/diamond/version/license/license.dat (make sure you change version to the version number installed in your system) to be able to start the Diamond programs.

Note that in case one does have the relevant hardware or wants to uncouple Diamond from it, it is possible to create a dummy Ethernet interface with an arbitrarily chosen MAC address. See MAC address spoofing#Manually, or add a new dummy interface like this:

Load the relevant kernel module and create the interface with the MAC address: 

# modprobe dummy
# ip link add bond0 type dummy
# ifconfig bond0 hw ether 10:22:33:44:55:66

Cleanup for after Diamond exits: 

# ip link delete bond0 type dummy
# rmmod dummy

Troubleshooting

Place & Route fails

If Place & Route fails with message ERROR - par: Switch "-msgsegset" is not allowed., try deleting the promote.xml file in the root directory of your project and launch it again. It should now run normally.

Programming with FTDI cables does not work

Programming FPGAs with FTDI chip based cables will not work if ftdi_sio kernel module is loaded. After plugging the programmer run: 

# rmmod ftdi_sio

Now the programmer should work until you re-attach it again (so you must run the command above every time the programmer is plugged).

Diamond crashes when FTDI based serial interface exists on a Lattice starter kit

The "Lattice Diamond 3.9 Installation Notice for Linux" document describes how to manually setup the serial driver but naming the udev rule as explained in that document does not work. Below are the instructions that work.

  1. Find your username which is given in /etc/group file. Log out if required. For example : 
    username:x:1000:
  2. Create a working file called 51-lattice.rules.
  3. Add the following information to the 51-lattice.rules file:
    1. Lattice - from Lattice Diamond 3.9 Installation Notice for Linux p.20 and https://github.com/jandob/lattice-diamond-archlinux showing a higher number used for the .rules file 
      SUBSYSTEM=="usb",ACTION=="add",ATTRS{idVendor}=="1134",ATTRS{idProduct}=="8001",MODE=="0660",GROUP=="username:x:1000:",SYMLINK+="lattice-%n"
    2. FTDI 
      SUBSYSTEM=="usb",ACTION=="add",ATTRS{idVendor}=="0403",ATTRS{idProduct}=="6010",MODE=="0666",GROUP=="username:x:1000:",SYMLINK+="ftdi-%n"
      SUBSYSTEM=="usb",ATTRS{idVendor}=="0403",ATTRS{idProduct}=="6010",RUN+="/bin/sh -c 'basename %p > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/ftdi_sio/unbind'"

Programmer tool is greyed out in Diamond GUI

It is caused by a missing dependency. Install the libusb-compat package. If it is not sufficient, launch the programmer binary directly to get a report of the missing library (/usr/local/diamond/3.12/bin/lin64/programmer).