> Can you recommend some of those open source tools that would aid in learning for people who don't already have hardware backgrounds?
I haven't played with them myself, but LiteX and FuseSoC are things to look into.
There is now also a whole fully open source tool suite to go from RTL (Verilog) all the way to a compiled bitstream for Lattice iCE40 and ECP5 FPGAs. That's not necessarily for beginners though.
This one is specifically about the RISC-V core: https://tomverbeure.github.io/risc-v/2018/11/19/A-Bug-Free-R...
> Can you recommend some of those open source tools that would aid in learning for people who don't already have hardware backgrounds?
I haven't played with them myself, but LiteX and FuseSoC are things to look into.
There is now also a whole fully open source tool suite to go from RTL (Verilog) all the way to a compiled bitstream for Lattice iCE40 and ECP5 FPGAs. That's not necessarily for beginners though.