Primate

Throughput-Oriented Accelerator Generator

Prerequisites

• Linux OS (tested on Ubuntu 20.04/22.04)
• Chisel3
• cmake
• ninja

Install Chisel3

Chisel3 setup guide

Install Cmake

Get Cmake

Install Ninja

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install ninja-build

NOTE: For some Linux distros, including CentOS, openSUSE, RHEL, Arch, macOS X, and Fedora, the default package manager is yum, not apt-get. To view your distro, run cat /etc/*-release

Update submodules

git submodule update --init --recursive

Compile Primate ArchGen

cd <primate home>/primate-arch-gen
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -G Ninja -DLLVM_TARGETS_TO_BUILD=host -DLLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS=clang -DLLVM_PARALLEL_LINK_JOBS=1 -DLLVM_LINK_LLVM_DYLIB=true ../llvm/
ninja

NOTE: If you run into an error that reads

  CMake 3.13.4 or higher is required.  You are running version 2.8.12.2

run cmake -G Ninja -DLLVM_TARGETS_TO_BUILD=host -DLLVM_ENABLE_PROJECTS=clang -DLLVM_PARALLEL_LINK_JOBS=1 -DLLVM_LINK_LLVM_DYLIB=true ../llvm/

NOTE: If you are getting a GCC version error that reads Host GCC version must be at least 5.1, your version is 4.8.5.

simply remove the CMakeCache.txt file in the build directory: rm CMakeCache.txt

Primate Application

Description

Primate application must be put in <primate home>/primate-uarch/apps/<app name>. Our example project, packet reassembler, is located at <primate home>/primate-uarch/apps/pktReassembly. It has 2 subdirectories, sw and hw, and a build script, build.sh. sw contains primate applications written in annotated C++, and a file containing input data, input.txt. The structure of input/output data, input_t/output_t must be defined in the source code. Each line in input.txt is one piece of input data packed. hw contains the hardware implementations of blue function units written in Chisel or Verilog, and a file listing out the module names and port names of each blue function unit, bfu_list.txt. The format is shown below,

<module 0>
{
    <port 0>
    <port 1>
    ...
}
<module 1>
{
    <port 0>
    ...
}
...

Build Primate Packet Reassembler

cd <primate home>/primate-uarch/apps/pktReassembly
./build.sh

Simulate in Verilator

cd <primate home>/primate-uarch/chisel/Gorilla++/emulator
make verilator

A waveform file, Top.vcd, will be generated at <project home>/primate-uarch/chisel/Gorilla++/test_run_dir/TopMainxxxx>/.

Generate Verilog files

cd <primate home>/primate-uarch/chisel/Gorilla++/emulator
make verilog

Top.v will be generated at <project home>/primate-uarch/chisel/Gorilla++/Top.v

Error Resolution

A list of previously encountered errors exist at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rzh7maXhUuWKWdk794fxJSPc8xqUHz6EzxZO6W1V9TQ/edit?usp=sharing