Set Up ESP

Open the setup guide Open the Docker guide

Docker status: these builds use legacy base distributions and are currently very out of date. Updated builds are planned. Until then, use them only to reproduce older ESP material in an appropriately isolated development environment, not as the recommended environment for current ESP. Historical host-networking and X-server commands reduce isolation; use them only on a trusted network and revoke temporary display access when finished.
Intel Quartus and SoC EDS setup is included for the unreleased DE10-Pro SX development port. RHEL 10 and AlmaLinux 10 host support is also unreleased. Coming soon

What you will learn

  • Install packages and tools required by ESP

  • Install the toolchains for the RISC-V Ariane, RISC-V Ibex and SparcV8 Leon3 processors

  • Set up the environment variables required by ESP

  • Reproduce an older ESP environment with the legacy Docker image

ESP setup workflow

What you will need

  • Linux operating system, unless you reproduce the legacy ESP Docker environment. Those images were historically tested on Windows 10 and macOS 10.15, but current host compatibility has not been validated. The native setup guide covers these Linux distributions:

    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 (recommended OS for ESP)

    • AlmaLinux 8 (currently tested with AlmaLinux 8.10)

    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 and AlmaLinux 10 are documented as an unreleased preview.

    • Ubuntu 22.04. Ubuntu 24.04 and Ubuntu 26.04 have preliminary package lists only; confirm commercial CAD-tool support separately.

    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.8 and CentOS 7 are legacy platforms. CentOS 7 is EOL, and RHEL 7 is EOL for non-ELS users.

What you can contribute

The ESP team welcomes external contributions and collaborations on a variety of topics including but not limited to:

  • Integration of more open-source processors

  • Support for more Operating Systems

  • Support for more CAD tools, especially if open-source