Good question! The design of LiteScope heavily inspired Manta, and Manta's Ethernet functionality comes from the LiteX Ethernet core.

That said, I spun Manta out into a separate project for a few reasons: - LiteX is written in nMigen, which has now spun off into Amaranth, and I wanted to use a language that's undergoing more active development. - I wanted to provide better support for non-SoC workflows. LiteScope is awesome when you're already using LiteX for your design, but it's a pretty steep barrier to entry if you're just trying to debug a class project real quick. - I wanted to provide a _lot_ of documentation! The original audience for the docs was undergraduate students that are new to the field and don't have a lot of time, so I wanted getting started to be as easy as possible.

I know the Amaranth project is working on it's own SoC tool, and I'll be curious to see how Manta evolves as the effort behind that ramps up.

Good to know, thanks! Perhaps you could mention this information on the main web page of Manta.

P.S. I've just recalled recently news from one new cheap FPGA (from Europe).

"Cologne Chip releases an open-source integrated logic analyser (ILA) for GateMate FPGA chips" (23.01.2024)

https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/01/23/cologne-chip-open-so...

https://github.com/colognechip/gatemate_ila