1.4. Initial Repository Setup

1.4.1. Requirements

Chipyard is developed and tested on Linux-based systems.

Warning

It is possible to use this on macOS or other BSD-based systems, although GNU tools will need to be installed; it is also recommended to install the RISC-V toolchain from brew.

Warning

Working under Windows is not recommended.

In CentOS-based platforms, we recommend installing the following dependencies:

#!/bin/bash

set -ex

sudo yum groupinstall -y "Development tools"
sudo yum install -y gmp-devel mpfr-devel libmpc-devel zlib-devel vim git java java-devel
curl https://bintray.com/sbt/rpm/rpm | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/bintray-sbt-rpm.repo
sudo yum install -y sbt texinfo gengetopt
sudo yum install -y expat-devel libusb1-devel ncurses-devel cmake "perl(ExtUtils::MakeMaker)"
# deps for poky
sudo yum install -y python36 patch diffstat texi2html texinfo subversion chrpath git wget
# deps for qemu
sudo yum install -y gtk3-devel
# deps for firemarshal
sudo yum install -y python36-pip python36-devel rsync libguestfs-tools makeinfo expat ctags
# Install GNU make 4.x (needed to cross-compile glibc 2.28+)
sudo yum install -y centos-release-scl
sudo yum install -y devtoolset-8-make
# install DTC
sudo yum install -y dtc

# install verilator
git clone http://git.veripool.org/git/verilator
cd verilator
git checkout v4.034
autoconf && ./configure && make -j16 && sudo make install

In Ubuntu/Debian-based platforms (Ubuntu), we recommend installing the following dependencies:

#!/bin/bash

set -ex

sudo apt-get install -y build-essential bison flex
sudo apt-get install -y libgmp-dev libmpfr-dev libmpc-dev zlib1g-dev vim git default-jdk default-jre
# install sbt: https://www.scala-sbt.org/release/docs/Installing-sbt-on-Linux.html
echo "deb https://dl.bintray.com/sbt/debian /" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sbt.list
curl -sL "https://keyserver.ubuntu.com/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x2EE0EA64E40A89B84B2DF73499E82A75642AC823" | sudo apt-key add
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y sbt
sudo apt-get install -y texinfo gengetopt
sudo apt-get install -y libexpat1-dev libusb-dev libncurses5-dev cmake
# deps for poky
sudo apt-get install -y python3.6 patch diffstat texi2html texinfo subversion chrpath git wget
# deps for qemu
sudo apt-get install -y libgtk-3-dev
# deps for firemarshal
sudo apt-get install -y python3-pip python3.6-dev rsync libguestfs-tools expat ctags
# install DTC
sudo apt-get install -y device-tree-compiler

# install verilator
git clone http://git.veripool.org/git/verilator
cd verilator
git checkout v4.034
autoconf && ./configure && make -j16 && sudo make install

Note

When running on an Amazon Web Services EC2 FPGA-development instance (for FireSim), FireSim includes a machine setup script that will install all of the aforementioned dependencies (and some additional ones).

1.4.2. Setting up the Chipyard Repo

Start by fetching Chipyard’s sources. Run:

git clone https://github.com/ucb-bar/chipyard.git
cd chipyard
./scripts/init-submodules-no-riscv-tools.sh

This will initialize and checkout all of the necessary git submodules.

When updating Chipyard to a new version, you will also want to rerun this script to update the submodules. Using git directly will try to initialize all submodules; this is not recommended unless you expressly desire this behavior.

1.4.3. Building a Toolchain

The toolchains directory contains toolchains that include a cross-compiler toolchain, frontend server, and proxy kernel, which you will need in order to compile code to RISC-V instructions and run them on your design. Currently there are two toolchains, one for normal RISC-V programs, and another for Hwacha (esp-tools). For custom installations, Each tool within the toolchains contains individual installation procedures within its README file. To get a basic installation (which is the only thing needed for most Chipyard use-cases), just the following steps are necessary. This will take about 20-30 minutes. You can expedite the process by setting a make environment variable to use parallel cores: export MAKEFLAGS=-j8.

./scripts/build-toolchains.sh riscv-tools # for a normal risc-v toolchain

Note

If you are planning to use the Hwacha vector unit, or other RoCC-based accelerators, you should build the esp-tools toolchain by adding the esp-tools argument to the script above. If you are running on an Amazon Web Services EC2 instance, intending to use FireSim, you can also use the --ec2fast flag for an expedited installation of a pre-compiled toolchain.

Once the script is run, a env.sh file is emitted that sets the PATH, RISCV, and LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variables. You can put this in your .bashrc or equivalent environment setup file to get the proper variables, or directly include it in your current environment:

source ./env.sh

These variables need to be set for the make system to work properly.

1.4.4. What’s Next?

This depends on what you are planning to do with Chipyard.

  • If you intend to run a simulation of one of the vanilla Chipyard examples, go to Software RTL Simulation and follow the instructions.
  • If you intend to run a simulation of a custom Chipyard SoC Configuration, go to Simulating A Custom Project and follow the instructions.
  • If you intend to run a full-system FireSim simulation, go to FPGA-Accelerated Simulation and follow the instructions.
  • If you intend to add a new accelerator, go to Customization and follow the instructions.
  • If you want to learn about the structure of Chipyard, go to Chipyard Components.
  • If you intend to change the generators (BOOM, Rocket, etc) themselves, see Included RTL Generators.
  • If you intend to run a tutorial VLSI flow using one of the Chipyard examples, go to ASAP7 Tutorial and follow the instructions.
  • If you intend to build a chip using one of the vanilla Chipyard examples, go to Building A Chip and follow the instructions.

1.4.5. Upgrading Chipyard Release Versions

In order to upgrade between Chipyard versions, we recommend using a fresh clone of the repository (or your fork, with the new release merged into it).

Chipyard is a complex framework that depends on a mix of build systems and scripts. Specifically, it relies on git submodules, on sbt build files, and on custom written bash scripts and generated files. For this reason, upgrading between Chipyard versions is not as trivial as just running git submodule update -recursive. This will result in recursive cloning of large submodules that are not necessarily used within your specific Chipyard environments. Furthermore, it will not resolve the status of stale state generated files which may not be compatible between release versions.

If you are an advanced git user, an alternative approach to a fresh repository clone may be to run git clean -dfx, and then run the standard Chipyard setup sequence. This approach is dangerous, and not-recommended for users who are not deeply familiar with git, since it “blows up” the repository state and removes all untracked and modified files without warning. Hence, if you were working on custom un-committed changes, you would lose them.

If you would still like to try to perform an in-place manual version upgrade (not-recommended), we recommend at least trying to resolve stale state in the following areas:

  • Delete stale target directories generated by sbt.
  • Delete jar collateral generated by FIRRTL (lib/firrtl.jar)
  • Re-generate generated scripts and source files (for example, env.sh)
  • Re-generating/deleting target software state (Linux kernel binaries, Linux images) within FireMarshal

This is by no means a comprehensive list of potential stale state within Chipyard. Hence, as mentioned earlier, the recommended method for a Chipyard version upgrade is a fresh clone (or a merge, and then a fresh clone).