rohd

Rapid Open Hardware Development (ROHD) Framework

ROHD (pronounced like "road") is a framework for describing and verifying hardware in the Dart programming language.

Documentation

For documentation, guides, and more, visit the ROHD Website!

• Install now
• Try it in-browser
• User Guide
• Tutorials
• YouTube Channel
• API Docs
• Blog
• Contributing

You can also open this repository in a GitHub Codespace to run the example in your browser with a full IDE. This is also an easy way to get started with contributions!

Get involved

• Join the Discord chat
• Attend the ROHD Forum meetings
• GitHub Discussions

About ROHD

• Full power of the modern Dart language for hardware design and verification
• Makes validation collateral simpler to develop and debug. The ROHD Verification Framework helps build well-structured testbenches.
• Develop layers of abstraction within a hardware design, making it more flexible and powerful
• Easy IP integration and interfaces; using an IP is as easy as an import. Reduces tedious, redundant, and error prone aspects of integration
• Simple and fast build, free of complex build systems and EDA vendor tools
• Can use the excellent pub.dev package manager and all the packages it has to offer
• Built-in event-based fast simulator with 4-value (0, 1, X, and Z) support and a waveform dumper to .vcd file format
• Conversion of modules to equivalent, human-readable, structurally similar SystemVerilog for integration or downstream tool consumption
• Run-time dynamic module port definitions (numbers, names, widths, etc.) and internal module logic, including recursive module contents
• Leverage the ROHD Hardware Component Library (ROHD-HCL) with reusable and configurable design and verification components.
• Simple, free, open source tool stack without any headaches from library dependencies, file ordering, elaboration/analysis options, +defines, etc.
• Excellent, simple, fast unit-testing framework
• Less verbose than alternatives (fewer lines of code)
• Enables higher quality development
• Replaces hacky perl/python scripting for automation with powerful native control of design generation
• Fewer bugs and lines of code means shorter development schedule
• Support for cosimulation with verilog modules (via ROHD Cosim) and instantiation of verilog modules in generated SystemVerilog code
• Use modern IDEs like Visual Studio Code, with excellent static analysis, fast autocomplete, built-in debugger, linting, git integration, extensions, and much more
• Simulate with various abstraction levels of models from architectural, to functional, to cycle-accurate, to RTL levels in the same language and environment.

ROHD is not a new language, it is not a hardware description language (HDL), and it is not a version of High-Level Synthesis (HLS). ROHD can be classified as a generator framework.

You can think of this project as an attempt to replace SystemVerilog and related build systems as the front-end methodology of choice in the industry.

One of ROHD's goals is to help grow an open-source community around reusable hardware designs and verification components.

Contributing

ROHD is under active development. If you're interested in contributing, have feedback or a question, or found a bug, please see CONTRIBUTING.md.

---

Copyright (C) 2021-2026 Intel Corporation
SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-3-Clause