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Documentation

Guides for designing, integrating and prototyping with ESP

Unless a guide is marked Coming soon, Legacy or Version-sensitive, the maintained guides target ESP 2026.1.0. Features marked Coming soon are documented from unreleased development work.
The Intel/Altera DE10-Pro SX and Vortex instructions document unreleased development work. Coming soon

New to ESP? Start with setting up your host, then design a single-core SoC. The architecture overview below and the ESP RISC-V Summit 2019 presentation give a concise introduction to the platform. For current commands and tool versions, use the maintained guides rather than the event tutorials.

Get started

  • Set up ESP

    Install host packages, the Python environment, CAD tools and the processor toolchains.

  • Design a single-core SoC

    Configure, simulate and prototype a minimal SoC, with side-by-side AMD/Xilinx and upcoming Intel/Altera flows.

  • Design a multicore SoC

    Add processor tiles and the cache hierarchy, and boot Linux SMP.

Accelerator design and integration

These flows work on AMD/Xilinx targets and are implemented in the upcoming Intel/Altera port.

High-level synthesis

These flows use AMD/Xilinx technology mappings and are not supported by the Intel/Altera DE10-Pro SX port.

System features

ASIC integration

Specifications

Legacy material

Archived guides for workflows that are no longer part of the current ESP source tree or recommended environment.