MorphoHDL: A Minimalistic Language for Growing Circuits Recursively

MorphoHDL: A Minimalistic Language for Growing Circuits Recursively

I designed MorphoHDL, a minimalistic Hardware Description Language that uses recursive division to grow digital circuits dynamically. Unlike traditional tools requiring manual hierarchy, this approach infers bus sizes automatically and handles arbitrary widths through a simple fallback mechanism. By treating circuit generation like a graph rewrite system, MorphoHDL bridges the gap between logical design and physical layout, offering a fresh perspective on solving timing-closure challenges in modern chip design.

In this ultimate view, the circuit behaves like a digital organism whose physical form and logical connections evolve together under local structural constraints.
  1. lefra

    The graphs are beautiful, however they're independent of the language (because they're a visualization of the resulting gates). You could get the same graphs from VHDL or Verilog.

    I don't like the "fallback" mechanism, because it will be used when "something goes wrong", without being specific about exactly under what conditions should the fallback happen. Maybe I made a mistake, "something" fails at a step I didn't expect, and this will silently implement in a way I didn't mean (maybe the result is even correct, just using way more gates than needed).

  2. freakynit

    I made this comment a few days back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48668760

    Is this kinda similar in nature?

  3. hosel

    The visualizations are stunning!

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2026-07-14