1. Overview

Chromite is an open-source core generator, which emits synthesizable, production quality RTL of processors based on the open RISC-V ISA. The core generator can produce variants of a commercial grade 5-stage in-order core supporting the RV[64/32]GCSUN (or its subsets) extensions of the RISC-V ISA, from the same high-level source code. Chromite leverages the high level abstraction offered by Bluespec System Verilog to build highly parameterized, compact and powerful library components (like arithmetic units, branch predictors, caches, mmu, etc) that can be seamlessly integrated to create a solution catered to your needs.

The configuration to the generator is provided through a very simple and easy to modify YAML file. The core generator uses a python script to generate the necessary environment variables and macros required to generate the RTL. The generated RTL is completely synthesizable and can be directly integrated into conventional VLSI flows for FPGA, ASIC or verification. Fig. 1.1 shows the basic flow of the Chromite core generator.

Fig. 1.1 Chromite Core Generator Flow

The various design instances generated through Chromite can serve domains ranging from embedded systems, motor-control, IoT, storage, industrial applications, all the way to low-cost, high-performance Linux based applications such as networking, gateways etc. The extreme parameterization of the design in conjunction with using an HLS like Bluespec, it makes it easy to add new features and design points on a continual basis.