Introduction

ReWire is a purely functional language for creating secure hardware designs that can be implemented on FPGAs, developed at the University of Missouri Center for High Assurance Computing. The ReWire language is a subset of Haskell that places some restrictions on the use of recursion. The ReWire compiler rwc translates ReWire programs into synthesizable VHDL.

This instruction manual has four parts:

  1. a discussion of how to acquire and install ReWire and its dependencies;
  2. a “quick start” tutorial that walks the user through the process of compiling and running a simple example program, both in simulation and on hardware;
  3. a detailed discussion of the ReWire language; and
  4. a detailed case study in the ReWire design flow.

While we aim to make this guide as self-contained as possible, prior knowledge of Haskell and some experience with basic FPGA development will be helpful.