Introduction

The Boreal project is a unified FPGA design framework for the Caribou base system and its supported devices. It provides a consolidated development environment that simplifies the integration of new devices across multiple platforms. Boreal integrates both commercial and custom IP cores, project management utilities, and a streamlined workflow to accelerate development and maintain consistency.

The source code is available on CERN’s GitLab in the Boreal repository.

The project name is inspired by the Boreal woodland caribou, a North American subspecies of reindeer found primarily in Canada (Wikipedia).

Getting Support

Support for Boreal is provided on a best-effort basis. While dedicated user support cannot be guaranteed, the authors welcome feedback, questions, and reports of issues. Contributions in the form of problem reports, documentation improvements, or suggestions for new features are highly appreciated.

All issues, questions, and requests should be submitted through the Caribou project issue tracker.

Contributing

Boreal is a community-driven project that thrives on active participation and contributions from its users. Developers interested in contributing are encouraged to contact the core team at caribou-developers@cern.ch.

Prospective contributors are also invited to use the issue tracker to share ideas, request guidance, or discuss their needs for new device integrations and feature development. Getting in touch with the core developers early in the process is strongly recommended, as this helps avoid duplicating work on features that may already exist or be under active development.