Xilinx Vitis and Vitis AI Software Development Platforms(eejournal.com)
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Xilinx Vitis and Vitis AI Software Development Platforms
https://www.eejournal.com/article/xilinx-vitis-and-vitis-ai-software-development-platforms/
29 comments
HLS is real. I've talked with dozens of teams who have successfully used HLS tools such as Mentor's Catapult, Xilinx's Vivado HLS, and Cadence's Stratus for a wide range of ASIC and FPGA projects. They claim they saw compelling benefits in project schedules, architectural flexibility, and overall performance. However, HLS is still (IMHO) a "power tool" for competent digital designers, not a tool that enables a software designer to create hardware. There is too much hardware-specific expertise required to create good HLS-able code and to do the tradeoffs like pipelining, unrolling, memory architecture, etc etc etc.
I'm curious: why is FPGA tooling so poor? I used a Spartan-3 over a decade ago for a simple project, and as cursory look it doesn't seem like things have changed much despite the devices becoming significantly more diverse and complicated.
It's not quite fair to say the tooling is flat-out awful. Vivado is much better than ISE. The place/route algorithms matured (analytical placement rather than simulated annealing), and the software it's wrapped in grew up (it's now tcl-driven and much more script- and revision-control-friendly.) Vivado was a heroic effort and Xilinx deserves credit for taking software seriously, and getting so much of it right. If you don't believe me, try hiring an FPGA engineer today to work on an ISE project. You'll get an earful.
That said, a solid, open-source, mixed-language simulator with good SystemVerilog and VHDL-2008 support would change my life. Bonus points if I can embed it in C/C++ code a la Verilator. And, while I'm asking, can it simulate encrypted IP too?
This is one of the places where HLS may sideswipe the traditional RTL market: if you can effectively develop FPGA designs in C++, the entire approach to development/testing/integration changes completely. It may sound like a detail, but it touches every single pain point associated with a complex FPGA design.
That said, a solid, open-source, mixed-language simulator with good SystemVerilog and VHDL-2008 support would change my life. Bonus points if I can embed it in C/C++ code a la Verilator. And, while I'm asking, can it simulate encrypted IP too?
This is one of the places where HLS may sideswipe the traditional RTL market: if you can effectively develop FPGA designs in C++, the entire approach to development/testing/integration changes completely. It may sound like a detail, but it touches every single pain point associated with a complex FPGA design.
I'm using Vivado right now. Things I hate about it:
- It's sluggish. The underlying algorithms may be fast (they handle huge designs), but even with an empty design it's sluggish. I'm not sure if this is from the Java or the TCL. On the other handle Altera/Intel Quartus is faster.. (it also uses Java and TCL..)
- I hate TCL. This whole concept of an integrated extension language in a massive tool is terrible. It's the standard way in the EDA world, but it's not good at all. I prefer simpler tools tied together with Makefiles..
- I hate the schematic-like block designs. I just want a single Verilog file that represents the design, no XML. The block designs are difficult to integrate with git.
- I hate projects. They are difficult to integrate with git: you have to export project tcl, then regenerate the project from this checked in file. It's aweful and breaks when the design gets complicated.
- I'm using Zynq Ultrascale+ and I hate eclipse. The EDK is eclipse-based. I just want a command line tool to generate a project from the hardware description so that I never have to open the Eclipse. True, once your hardware is stabilized, you can avoid it (it does generate a Makefile). I've not tried Altera's SoCs, so not sure if better.
That being said, Xilinx did a good job with the BSP software and the Linux support. At least it's better than what we see on some embedded processors (Nvidia, ugh..)
Also I recently ported a design from Zynq (32-bit) to Zynq Ultrascale+ (64-bit). Not bad at all.
- It's sluggish. The underlying algorithms may be fast (they handle huge designs), but even with an empty design it's sluggish. I'm not sure if this is from the Java or the TCL. On the other handle Altera/Intel Quartus is faster.. (it also uses Java and TCL..)
- I hate TCL. This whole concept of an integrated extension language in a massive tool is terrible. It's the standard way in the EDA world, but it's not good at all. I prefer simpler tools tied together with Makefiles..
- I hate the schematic-like block designs. I just want a single Verilog file that represents the design, no XML. The block designs are difficult to integrate with git.
- I hate projects. They are difficult to integrate with git: you have to export project tcl, then regenerate the project from this checked in file. It's aweful and breaks when the design gets complicated.
- I'm using Zynq Ultrascale+ and I hate eclipse. The EDK is eclipse-based. I just want a command line tool to generate a project from the hardware description so that I never have to open the Eclipse. True, once your hardware is stabilized, you can avoid it (it does generate a Makefile). I've not tried Altera's SoCs, so not sure if better.
That being said, Xilinx did a good job with the BSP software and the Linux support. At least it's better than what we see on some embedded processors (Nvidia, ugh..)
Also I recently ported a design from Zynq (32-bit) to Zynq Ultrascale+ (64-bit). Not bad at all.
You can generate the sdk including the makefiles from the command line. I don't think I have opened Eclipse on my latest project.
They also do have some articles on preparing the projects for git which work OK, but yeah there is a lot more to be done.
I'm not sure how you would replace the tcl scripts with makefiles. Most of them contain functions to wire together not build targets.
They also do have some articles on preparing the projects for git which work OK, but yeah there is a lot more to be done.
I'm not sure how you would replace the tcl scripts with makefiles. Most of them contain functions to wire together not build targets.
These are all fair criticisms. Block designs, XML files for project and IP management, and auto-generated .tcl are all bad things. Eclipse sucks.
I understand why vendors ship tools with all of these things. I think (hope?) they're slowly un-bundling more and more of the toolflow so you can avoid them if you want.
I understand why vendors ship tools with all of these things. I think (hope?) they're slowly un-bundling more and more of the toolflow so you can avoid them if you want.
FWIW the ISE tooling was all command line driven and could be orchestrated from a makefile and controlled by a VCS. You'd lose some of the graphical convenience to monitor issues and reporting but it can be done.
HLS's problem is how to deal with assumptions about memory access and parallelism. You invariably end up coding to the tool to accommodate the limitations of C in this domain.
HLS's problem is how to deal with assumptions about memory access and parallelism. You invariably end up coding to the tool to accommodate the limitations of C in this domain.
Mostly because it's (almost) all proprietary. None of the companies are investing in a truly usable solution. It speaks volumes that a handful of developers working for free where able to create a vastly better experience with yosys and friends.
I've always imagined they have a good quality version for military applications, and the bad stuff for everyone else
Most of the development is for the military. It gets farmed to contractors who use all the same stuff you have access to, just typically several years out of date.
The ability to fully enumerate and simulate every part of the design gives them a huge hardon even though stuff frequently passes simulation and fails on the silicon. It's very common to see FPGAs in nuclear, military RF, and aerospace applications.
The ability to fully enumerate and simulate every part of the design gives them a huge hardon even though stuff frequently passes simulation and fails on the silicon. It's very common to see FPGAs in nuclear, military RF, and aerospace applications.
There are no separate tools for military use. And, the mil/aero versions of the chips are usually a generation or two behind because of the extra work to make them high-reliability, produce the required documentation, etc.
"The adoption of FPGA technology in the market has always been limited by the severe learning curve required to take advantage of it."
I vehemently disagree with this. FGPAs and their toolchains are notoriously expensive and proprietary. I have no doubt that if tool chains were opened up and an average person could program for it, you would see much more.rapid adoption because then an average person could start the learning curve much easier
I vehemently disagree with this. FGPAs and their toolchains are notoriously expensive and proprietary. I have no doubt that if tool chains were opened up and an average person could program for it, you would see much more.rapid adoption because then an average person could start the learning curve much easier
The "average person" cannot program for it. I've managed teams as large as 60 extremely competent full-time EDA engineers working for years on only the synthesis portion of the problem. It is FAR more complex than, say, developing a compiler. Both Xilinx and Intel have more engineers developing FPGA software tools than they do developing FPGA hardware. It's a common misconception that just any group of competent software engineers could whip out better FPGA tools if they only had access...
I also disagree. The main problem is much simpler: they cost too much for fundamental reasons. The die-size for an FPGA that would have equivalent power of an Intel CPU or Nvidia GPU would be huge and expensive.
That's simply not right. The FPGA in your NIC is much more powerful for packet processing than any CPU or GPU. Yes, the CPU is better at being a CPU- but that's just a matter of using the right tool for the job.
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What does "equivalent power" even mean? It's completely useless without any qualifiers or specific metrics/goals.
My Nvidia GPU also doesn't run x86 programs at the speed of my desktop, but I never expected it to. It's true in the vacuous sense only.
My Nvidia GPU also doesn't run x86 programs at the speed of my desktop, but I never expected it to. It's true in the vacuous sense only.
They are all Turing machines, all that matters is can I run my algorithm at higher performance than equivalent priced conventional solutions.
This is incredibly naive. There are algorithm where CPU but GPU easily. There are also algorithms where a GPU beats a CPU easily. There are also algorithms where an FPGA beats a GPU and a CPU easily. You simply can't say x is better then y in general. They all have their own domains.
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This. It's not so hard, any competent software engineer could learn HDLs in one or two weeks. The fucking toolchain though? Months...
Ive seen plenty of HDL written by people who are software engineers, it's not good. It seems to me most software engineers struggle with visualizing their behavioral code as a schematic and tend to write code that is not very synthesis friendly and overly convoluted. Not to mention most issues with hardware engineering cant be solved by a google search of how to do X in Verilog/VHDL, problems tend to be device specific which means you NEED to understand your tool chain and can't abstract away the code from from the implementation like you can with most high level software to the ASM/binary.
I have seen some code written by software engineers that was bad and also a lot that was good. They simply need to be taught how HDLs work which is conceptually simpler then something like C++.
I very much disagree that most issues are hardware specific. FPGAs all work the same way. What is different is the IP that can be ran on different FPGAs but that is generally a tooling problem not inherent to the problem domain.
I very much disagree that most issues are hardware specific. FPGAs all work the same way. What is different is the IP that can be ran on different FPGAs but that is generally a tooling problem not inherent to the problem domain.
Software Engineers can learn HDLs in one or two weeks about as well as hardware engineers can learn C++ in one or two weeks. Will they get to something syntactically correct? Sure. That doesn't mean what they'd be able to write would be useful. And it's not just the toolchain, it's about understanding that HDL isn't a tool for programming FPGAs, it's a tool for programming hardware and FPGAs are one very specific target for which writing performant code requires a high level of knowledge about the underlying structure of the FPGA.
HDLs are conceptually much, much simpler then C++. HDLs actually are a tool for programming FPGAs, that this is actually programming hardware is an implementation detail.
It's a chicken and egg problem too. Toolchain friction and depth of knowledge required is one part. Ubiquity of FPGA silicon lying around in the average programmer's (and end-user's) machine is not there.
Silicon availability has recently been solved. There are FPGA dev boards available for under $50. They're low-powered but great to learn on. One, the FOMU, actually fits inside a USB type-A port.
A jaded RTL engineer may fairly ask, "what's different this time?" I'm convinced it's two things:
1. These chips have scaled to the point where the toolflow isn't just annoying, it's crippling. (I say that as an RTL designer who likes Vivado, believe it or not.) Making effective use of the largest FPGAs in traditional FPGA applications is difficult enough. Plus, the marginal cost of baking e.g. ARM cores onto an FPGA is now so low that these parts are quickly becoming heterogeneous SoCs and it requires extensive cross-domain knowledge to get a modern design off the ground. More importantly, though, Xilinx is trying to expand FPGAs beyond traditional FPGA markets, and it can't do so without expanding the pool of available talent to program them. Finally, new FPGA applications (e.g. AI) come with their own technical arcana and finding FPGA designers who are proficient in all of these domains is only growing harder. It is necessary for the tools to help, and Xilinx is amply incentivized to pour money into the R&D programs necessary, even if the new tools are simply bundled alongside the old ones.
2. This may be a surprise, but LLVM. Doing HLS correctly is a forced march through every conceivable corner of compiler, language, and RTL design, and to date, that's been much too difficult for EDA companies. I believe that LLVM as an accessible compiler workshop has been instrumental to Xilinx's success to date.
I hope Xilinx does genuinely open-source some of the pieces. (Not the synthesis flow, in this case, but all the stuff built on top of it.) The open-source EDA community is small but motivated and talented, but it's crippled by balkanization caused by the commercial EDA market. This might be an interesting shot in the arm.