Role of gapy, list of peripherals and capabilities of gvsoc

[kgf]

Thanks a lot for the post. Quite a bit there, I'll try to answer a few:
- We have moved to "bender" for the most part instead of IPApprox recently.. that is correct. However the build scripts should execute this automatically
- The IPs will be downloaded form git recursively. You can see the list in Bender.yml
https://github.com/pulp-platform/pulpiss...Bender.yml
Some of these will also start loading additional repos (i.e. pulp_soc...)
- GVSoC as you mention is a simulator so that the entire SoC can be emulated without running RTL simulations. It will accept different configurations, but there are some 'tested and known' configurations. However, there is no 'real' difference between a configuration with/without (say) SPI.. if you do not use the SPI, you do not use it.. it does not contain, area/power contributions for these additional components.
- Unfortunately, stripping some components (at RTL level) from PULPissimo is not always so trivial (some components need to be involved in it). To make this easier we are contributing to something between PULPissimo and PULPino together with our friends at EPFL, LowRISC and OpenHW. It is still under development but you can follow it here (https://github.com/esl-epfl/x-heep)
- Adding/deleting components would make sense at HDL level if you want to build and see how your things work. Otherwise GVSoC is OK to play around with a setup.