The open-source community is a valuable resource for many hobbyists and researchers interested in collaborating and contributing towards publicly available tools. In the area of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) this is no exception. Contributors seek to reverse-engineer the functions of large proprietary FPGA devices. An interesting challenge for open-source FPGA engineers has been reverse-engineering the operation and bitstreams of digital signal processing (DSP) blocks located in FPGAs. SymbiFlow is an open-source FPGA toolchain designed as a free alternative to proprietary computer-aided design tools like Xilinx’s Vivado. For SymbiFlow, mapping logical multipliers to DSP blocks and generating DSP block bitstreams has been left unimplemented for the Artix-7 family of FPGAs. This research seeks to rectify this shortcoming by introducing DSP information for the place and route functions into SymbiFlow. By delving into the SymbiFlow architecture definitions and creating functioning FPGA assembly code (FASM) files for Project X-Ray, a bitstream generator for Artix-7, we have been able to determine the desired output of the open-source Versatile Place & Route tool that will generate a working DSP bitstream. We diagnose and implement changes needed throughout the SymbiFlow toolchain, allowing for DSP design bitstreams to be successfully generated with open-source tools.

This master thesis will cover the prestudy, hardware selection, design and implementation of a PCI Express bridge in the M.2 form factor. The thesis subject was proposed by WISI Norden who wished to extend the functionality of their hardware using an M.2 module. The bridge fits an M-Key M.2 slot and has the dimensions 80x22 mm. It is able to communicate at speeds up to 8 Gb/s over PCI Express and 200 Mbit/s on any of the 20 LVDS/CMOS pins. The prestudy determined that an FPGA should be used and a Xilinx Artix-7 device was chosen. A PCB was designed that hosts the FPGA as well as any power, debugging and other required systems. Associated proof-of-concept software was designed to verify that the bridge operated as expected. The software proves that the bridge works but requires improvement before the bridge can be used to translate sophisticated protocols. The bridge works, with minor hardware modifications, as expected. It fulfills all design requirements set in the master thesis and the FPGA firmware uses a well-established protocol, making further development easier.