Enhancing FPGA Design Efficiency with AI & Open-Source Solutions

Rapid Silicon, Inc. is a leader in providing domain-specific FPGAs for diverse target applications and power, performance, and area (PPA). They use a combination of open-source methodology and proprietary AI technology to enable a fast and seamless design-to-silicon experience.

Raptor Design Suite (RDS), which StartupSoft worked on, is the world’s first commercial FPGA EDA environment based on end-to-end open-source software. The open-source nature of RDS means that the entire community and ecosystem collaborate to make it the best in the business, with its source code available for exploration and contribution on GitHub.

RapidSilicon engaged us to develop a functional user software, design modern user interface, and integrate their software with open-source and proprietary tools.

KEY REQUIREMENTS:

• To build a modular framework that allows other companies to use it as a base for their own toolset.
• To develop an architecture that is flexible enough to easily add new FPGA design requirements.
• To ensure the architecture supports efficient testing of individual modules.
• To enable seamless integration with any open-source or proprietary tools.
• To integrate industry-standard TCL-based scripting.
• To integrate an AI assistant.

Our team focused on three key areas: developing a modern graphical user interface (GUI), fixing backend issues, and integrating essential tools within RapidSilicon’s system.

We built the interface using C++/Qt, fixed critical backend bugs, and integrated AI-driven tools to enhance the FPGA configuration process. Our team also successfully integrated an open-source editor used by platforms like VS Code, improving software user experience.

Through our collaboration, we helped integrate various third-party open-source tools like Monaco editor, which contributed to improving the overall user experience and quality. Additionally, we helped to integrate AI assistant (RapidGPT) into the GUI, supporting FPGA engineers in their design process.

This successful partnership contributed to RapidSilicon raising Series Seed and Series A investments.