.. Copyright 2003-2021 by Wilson Snyder.
.. SPDX-License-Identifier: LGPL-3.0-only OR Artistic-2.0

************************
Contributors and Origins
************************

Authors
=======

When possible, please instead report bugs at `Verilator Issues
<https://verilator.org/issues>`_.

Primary author is Wilson Snyder <wsnyder@wsnyder.org>.

Major concepts by Paul Wasson, Duane Galbi, John Coiner and Jie Xu.


Contributors
============

Many people have provided ideas and other assistance with Verilator.

Verilator is receiving major development support from the `CHIPS Alliance
<https://chipsalliance.org>`_.

Previous major corporate sponsors of Verilator, by providing significant
contributions of time or funds included include: Atmel Corporation, Cavium
Inc., Compaq Corporation, Digital Equipment Corporation, Embecosm Ltd.,
Hicamp Systems, Intel Corporation, Mindspeed Technologies Inc., MicroTune
Inc., picoChip Designs Ltd., Sun Microsystems Inc., Nauticus Networks Inc.,
and SiCortex Inc.

The people who have contributed major functionality are: Byron Bradley,
Jeremy Bennett, Lane Brooks, John Coiner, Duane Galbi, Geza Lore, Todd
Strader, Stefan Wallentowitz, Paul Wasson, Jie Xu, and Wilson Snyder.
Major testers included Jeff Dutton, Jonathon Donaldson, Ralf Karge, David
Hewson, Iztok Jeras, Wim Michiels, Alex Solomatnikov, Sebastien Van
Cauwenberghe, Gene Weber, and Clifford Wolf.

Some of the people who have provided ideas, and feedback for Verilator
include: David Addison, Nikana Anastasiadis, Vasu Arasanipalai, Jens Arm,
Tariq B. Ahmad, Sharad Bagri, Matthew Ballance, Andrew Bardsley, Matthew
Barr, Geoff Barrett, Kaleb Barrett, Julius Baxter, Jeremy Bennett, Michael
Berman, Jean Berniolles, Victor Besyakov, Moinak Bhattacharyya, Krzysztof
Bieganski, David Binderman, Piotr Binkowski, Johan Bjork, David Black,
Tymoteusz Blazejczyk, Daniel Bone, Morten Borup Petersen, Gregg Bouchard,
Christopher Boumenot, Nick Bowler, Byron Bradley, Bryan Brady, Charlie
Brej, J Briquet, Lane Brooks, John Brownlee, Jeff Bush, Lawrence Butcher,
Tony Bybell, Iru Cai, Ted Campbell, Chris Candler, Lauren Carlson, Donal
Casey, Alex Chadwick, Terry Chen, Yi-Chung Chen, Enzo Chi, Robert A. Clark,
Ryan Clarke, Allan Cochrane, John Coiner, Gianfranco Costamagna, Sean
Cross, George Cuan, Joe DErrico, Lukasz Dalek, Gunter Dannoritzer, Ashutosh
Das, Maarten De Braekeleer, Bernard Deadman, Alberto Del Rio, John Demme,
Mike Denio, John Deroo, Philip Derrick, John Dickol, Ruben Diez, Danny
Ding, Jacko Dirks, Ivan Djordjevic, Jonathon Donaldson, Sebastian Dressler,
Alex Duller, Jeff Dutton, Tomas Dzetkulic, Richard E George, Edgar
E. Iglesias, Usuario Eda, Charles Eddleston, Chandan Egbert, Jan Egil Ruud,
Joe Eiler, Ahmed El-Mahmoudy, Trevor Elbourne, Mats Engstrom, Charles Eric
LaForest, Robert Farrell, Eugen Fekete, Fabrizio Ferrandi, Udi Finkelstein,
Brian Flachs, Andrea Foletto, Bob Fredieu, Duane Galbi, Benjamin Gartner,
Christian Gelinek, Peter Gerst, Glen Gibb, Michael Gielda, Barbara Gigerl,
Shankar Giri, Dan Gisselquist, Petr Gladkikh, Sam Gladstone, Andrew
Goessling, Amir Gonnen, Chitlesh Goorah, Tomasz Gorochowik, Kai Gossner,
Sergi Granell, Al Grant, Alexander Grobman, Xuan Guo, Driss Hafdi, Neil
Hamilton, James Hanlon, Oyvind Harboe, Jannis Harder, Junji Hashimoto,
Thomas Hawkins, Mitch Hayenga, Harald Heckmann, Robert Henry, Stephen
Henry, David Hewson, Jamey Hicks, Joel Holdsworth, Andrew Holme, Hiroki
Honda, Alex Hornung, Pierre-Henri Horrein, David Horton, Peter Horvath, Jae
Hossell, Kuoping Hsu, Alan Hunter, James Hutchinson, Anderson Ignacio da
Silva, Jamie Iles, Thomas J Whatson, Ben Jackson, Mark Jackson Pulver,
Shareef Jalloq, Marlon James, Krzysztof Jankowski, HyungKi Jeong, Iztok
Jeras, James Johnson, Christophe Joly, Franck Jullien, James Jung, Mike
Kagen, Arthur Kahlich, Kaalia Kahn, Guy-Armand Kamendje, Vasu Kandadi,
Kanad Kanhere, Patricio Kaplan, Pieter Kapsenberg, Rafal Kapuscik, Ralf
Karge, Dan Katz, Sol Katzman, Ian Kennedy, Michael Killough, Jonathan
Kimmitt, Olof Kindgren, Kevin Kiningham, Dan Kirkham, Sobhan Klnv, Gernot
Koch, Jack Koenig, Soon Koh, Nathan Kohagen, Steve Kolecki, Brett Koonce,
Will Korteland, Wojciech Koszek, Varun Koyyalagunta, Markus Krause, David
Kravitz, Roland Kruse, Andreas Kuster, Sergey Kvachonok, Ed Lander, Steve
Lang, Stephane Laurent, Walter Lavino, Christian Leber, Larry Lee, Igor
Lesik, John Li, Eivind Liland, Charlie Lind, Andrew Ling, Jiuyang Liu, Paul
Liu, Derek Lockhart, Jake Longo, Geza Lore, Arthur Low, Stefan Ludwig, Dan
Lussier, Fred Ma, Duraid Madina, Odd Magne Reitan, Affe Mao, Julien
Margetts, Mark Marshall, Alfonso Martinez, Unai Martinez-Corral, Yves
Mathieu, Patrick Maupin, Conor McCullough, Jason McMullan, Elliot Mednick,
Wim Michiels, Miodrag Milanovic, Peter Monsson, Sean Moore, Dennis
Muhlestein, John Murphy, Matt Myers, Nathan Myers, Richard Myers, Dimitris
Nalbantis, Peter Nelson, Bob Newgard, Paul Nitza, Yossi Nivin, Pete Nixon,
Lisa Noack, Mark Nodine, Kuba Ober, Andreas Olofsson, Baltazar Ortiz,
Aleksander Osman, Don Owen, James Pallister, Vassilis Papaefstathiou, Brad
Parker, Dan Petrisko, Maciej Piechotka, David Pierce, Cody Piersall,
Dominic Plunkett, David Poole, Mike Popoloski, Roman Popov, Rich Porter,
Niranjan Prabhu, Usha Priyadharshini, Prateek Puri, Marshal Qiao, Nandu
Raj, Danilo Ramos, Chris Randall, Anton Rapp, Josh Redford, Frederic
Requin, Dustin Richmond, Samuel Riedel, Eric Rippey, Oleg Rodionov, Ludwig
Rogiers, Paul Rolfe, Arjen Roodselaar, Tobias Rosenkranz, Huang Rui, Denis
Rystsov, John Sanguinetti, Galen Seitz, Joseph Shaker, Salman Sheikh, Yu
Sheng Lin, Hao Shi, Mike Shinkarovsky, Rafael Shirakawa, Jeffrey Short, Fan
Shupei, Rodney Sinclair, Steven Slatter, Brian Small, Garrett Smith, Tim
Snyder, Wilson Snyder, Maciej Sobkowski, Stan Sokorac, Alex Solomatnikov,
Wei Song, Art Stamness, David Stanford, John Stevenson, Pete Stevenson,
Patrick Stewart, Rob Stoddard, Todd Strader, John Stroebel, Sven Stucki,
Howard Su, Emerson Suguimoto, Gene Sullivan, Wai Sum Mong, Qingyao Sun,
Renga Sundararajan, Rupert Swarbrick, Yutetsu Takatsukasa, Thierry Tambe,
Drew Taussig, Peter Tengstrand, Wesley Terpstra, Rui Terra, Stefan Thiede,
Gary Thomas, Ian Thompson, Kevin Thompson, Mike Thyer, Hans Tichelaar,
Viktor Tomov, Steve Tong, Alex Torregrosa, Michael Tresidder, David Turner,
Neil Turton, Cong Van Nguyen, Hans Van Antwerpen, Jan Van Winkel, Sebastien
Van Cauwenberghe, Laurens van Dam, Leendert van Doorn, Srini Vemuri, Yuri
Victorovich, Bogdan Vukobratovic, Holger Waechtler, Philipp Wagner, Stefan
Wallentowitz, Shawn Wang, Paul Wasson, Greg Waters, Thomas Watts, Eugene
Weber, David Welch, Martin Whitaker, Marco Widmer, Leon Wildman, Daniel
Wilkerson, Gerald Williams, Trevor Williams, Jeff Winston, Joshua Wise,
Clifford Wolf, Tobias Wolfel, Johan Wouters, Paul Wright, Junyi Xi, Ding
Xiaoliang, Jie Xu, Mandy Xu, Yinan Xu, Luke Yang, Amir Yazdanbakhsh, and
Keyi Zhang.

Thanks to them, and all those we've missed including above, or wished to
remain anonymous.

Historical Origins
==================

Verilator was conceived in 1994 by Paul Wasson at the Core Logic Group at
Digital Equipment Corporation.  The Verilog code that was converted to C
was then merged with a C based CPU model of the Alpha processor and
simulated in a C based environment called CCLI.

In 1995 Verilator started being used also for Multimedia and Network
Processor development inside Digital.  Duane Galbi took over active
development of Verilator, and added several performance enhancements.  CCLI
was still being used as the shell.

In 1998, through the efforts of existing DECies, mainly Duane Galbi,
Digital graciously agreed to release the source code.  (Subject to the code
not being resold, which is compatible with the GNU Public License.)

In 2001, Wilson Snyder took the kit, and added a SystemC mode, and called
it Verilator2.  This was the first packaged public release.

In 2002, Wilson Snyder created Verilator 3.000 by rewriting Verilator from
scratch in C++.  This added many optimizations, yielding about a 2-5x
performance gain.

In 2009, major SystemVerilog and DPI language support was added.

In 2018, Verilator 4.000 was released with multithreaded support.

In 2019, Verilator joined the `CHIPS Alliance
<https://chipsalliance.org>`_.

Currently, various language features and performance enhancements are added
as the need arises.  Verilator is now about 3x faster than in 2002, and is
faster than most (if not every) other simulator.
