> Open source tools can now compile C++ into silicon (with caveats).

Woah, really? This seems ... impossible, right?

Been around for a while (at least the proprietary stuff). Certain things that are mere "style" and don't affect runtime for traditional C++ do have large effects on the generated code though. Intermediate variables for example will affect how many pipeline stages it generates (at least with Vivado).

Its a cool tool, but right now it's more of a productivity aide for people who already understand Verilog/VHDL rather than an enabler for software engineers.

lwb

Interesting. Seems like it would be a big performance gain for e.g. Facebook to convert all their networking/server code to silicon. Obviously has drawbacks like decreased speed of deployment and whatnot but it sounds like something that could be huge one day.

xvilka

C++ is a poor fit for this. Proper high-level HDLs are better to understand and work with. Mentioned in the neighbor commment Clash[1], Chisel[2]/FIRRTL[3], Hardcaml[4], Spatial[5], various Python-based languages, there many[6].

[1] https://clash-lang.org/

[2] https://www.chisel-lang.org/

[3] https://www.chisel-lang.org/firrtl/

[4] https://github.com/janestreet/hardcaml

[5] https://spatial-lang.org/

[6] https://github.com/drom/awesome-hdl