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Vortex Simulation Methods

RTL Simulation

Verilator is a Verilog/SystemVerilog design simulator that converts the Verilog HDL to single- or mult-ithreaded C++/SystemC code to perform the design simulation. An installation guide for Verilator is located here.

Cycle-Approximate Simulation

SimX is a C++ cycle-level in-house simulator developed for Vortex. The relevant files are located in the simx folder. The readme has the most detailed instructions for building and running simX.

FGPA Simulation

The guide to build the fpga with specific configurations is located here. You can find instructions for both Xilinx and Altera based FPGAs.

How to Test (using blackbox.sh)

Running tests under specific drivers (rtlsim,simx,fpga) is done using the script named blackbox.sh located in the ci folder. Running command ./ci/blackbox.sh --help from the Vortex root directory will display the following command line arguments for blackbox.sh:

  • Clusters - used to specify the number of clusters (collection of processing elements) within a configuration.
  • Cores - used to specify the number of cores (processing element containing multiple warps) within a configuration.
  • Warps - used to specify the number of warps (collection of concurrent hardware threads) within a configuration.
  • Threads - used to specify the number of threads (smallest unit of computation) within a configuration.
  • L2cache - used to enable the shared l2cache among the Vortex cores.
  • L3cache - used to enable the shared l3cache among the Vortex clusters.
  • Driver - used to specify which driver to run the Vortex simulation (either rtlsim, opae, xrt, simx).
  • Debug - used to enable debug mode for the Vortex simulation.
  • Perf - used to enable the detailed performance counters within the Vortex simulation.
  • App - used to specify which test/benchmark to run in the Vortex simulation. The main choices are vecadd, sgemm, basic, demo, and dogfood. Other tests/benchmarks are located in the /benchmarks/opencl folder though not all of them work wit the current version of Vortex.
  • Args - used to pass additional arguments to the application.

Example use of command line arguments: Run the sgemm benchmark using the opae driver with a Vortex configuration of 1 cluster, 4 cores, 4 warps, and 4 threads.

$ ./ci/blackbox.sh --clusters=1 --cores=4 --warps=4 --threads=4 --driver=opae --app=sgemm

Output from terminal:

Create context
Create program from kernel source
Upload source buffers
Execute the kernel
Elapsed time: 2463 ms
Download destination buffer
Verify result
PASSED!
PERF: core0: instrs=90802, cycles=52776, IPC=1.720517
PERF: core1: instrs=90693, cycles=53108, IPC=1.707709
PERF: core2: instrs=90849, cycles=53107, IPC=1.710678
PERF: core3: instrs=90836, cycles=50347, IPC=1.804199
PERF: instrs=363180, cycles=53108, IPC=6.838518

Additional Quick Start Scenarios

Running Vortex simulators with different configurations and drivers is supported. For example:

  • Run basic driver test with rtlsim driver and Vortex config of 2 clusters, 2 cores, 2 warps, 4 threads

    $ ./ci/blackbox.sh --driver=rtlsim --clusters=2 --cores=2 --warps=2 --threads=4 --app=basic

  • Run demo driver test with opae driver and Vortex config of 1 clusters, 4 cores, 4 warps, 2 threads

    $ ./ci/blackbox.sh --driver=opae --clusters=1 --cores=4 --warps=4 --threads=2 --app=demo

  • Run dogfood driver test with simx driver and Vortex config of 4 cluster, 4 cores, 8 warps, 6 threads

    $ ./ci/blackbox.sh --driver=simx --clusters=4 --cores=4 --warps=8 --threads=6 --app=dogfood