What categories of bugs do chisel users write most often?

[家才崔]

Hello, wonderful members of the Chisel community!

I hope you're all doing well. My name is Jacy Cui, and I'm a junior Ph.D. student specializing in static program analysis. Recently, I’ve become very interested in Chisel and Firrtl, the modern hardware programming languages. As someone from a programming languages and program analysis background, I've found it surprisingly easy and enjoyable to write hardware programs with Chisel. It’s been a quite unique and exciting experience for me!

In my upcoming research, I’m considering to explore the static program analysis of Chisel. My goal is to help Chisel users spot potential design issues at an early stage, allowing them to fix these problems quickly and improve the reliability and security of Chisel programs. Additionally, I’m also looking into Chisel’s program understanding as a possible research topic.

I’d love to hear from you all about a few things: What are the main pain points Chisel users face during development? What categories of bugs do  Chisel users encounter most often? Are there any specific needs or problems that Chisel users have that someone with my background in programming languages and static program analysis could help solve?

Thank you so much for your time and insights. I’m really looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Best wishes, Jacy.