2.1. Software RTL Simulation

2.1.1. Verilator (Open-Source)

Verilator is an open-source LGPL-Licensed simulator maintained by Veripool. The Chipyard framework can download, build, and execute simulations using Verilator.

2.1.2. Synopsys VCS (License Required)

VCS is a commercial RTL simulator developed by Synopsys. It requires commercial licenses. The Chipyard framework can compile and execute simulations using VCS. VCS simulation will generally compile faster than Verilator simulations.

To run a VCS simulation, make sure that the VCS simulator is on your PATH.

2.1.3. Choice of Simulator

First, we will start by entering the Verilator or VCS directory:

For an open-source Verilator simulation, enter the sims/verilator directory

# Enter Verilator directory
cd sims/verilator

For a proprietry VCS simulation, enter the sims/vcs directory

# Enter VCS directory
cd sims/vcs

2.1.4. Simulating The Default Example

To compile the example design, run make in the selected verilator or VCS directory. This will elaborate the RocketConfig in the example project.

Note

The elaboration of RocketConfig requires about 6.5 GB of main memory. Otherwise the process will fail with make: *** [firrtl_temp] Error 137 which is most likely related to limited resources. Other configurations might require even more main memory.

An executable called simulator-chipyard.harness-RocketConfig will be produced. This executable is a simulator that has been compiled based on the design that was built. You can then use this executable to run any compatible RV64 code. For instance, to run one of the riscv-tools assembly tests.

./simulator-chipyard.harness-RocketConfig $RISCV/riscv64-unknown-elf/share/riscv-tests/isa/rv64ui-p-simple

Note

In a VCS simulator, the simulator name will be simv-chipyard.harness-RocketConfig instead of simulator-chipyard.harness-RocketConfig.

The makefiles have a run-binary rule that simplifies running the simulation executable. It adds many of the common command line options for you and redirects the output to a file.

make run-binary BINARY=$RISCV/riscv64-unknown-elf/share/riscv-tests/isa/rv64ui-p-simple

Alternatively, we can run a pre-packaged suite of RISC-V assembly or benchmark tests, by adding the make target run-asm-tests or run-bmark-tests. For example:

make run-asm-tests
make run-bmark-tests

Note

Before running the pre-packaged suites, you must run the plain make command, since the elaboration command generates a Makefile fragment that contains the target for the pre-packaged test suites. Otherwise, you will likely encounter a Makefile target error.

2.1.5. Custom Benchmarks/Tests

To compile your own bare-metal code to run in a Verilator/VCS simulation, add it to Chipyard’s tests directory then add its name to the list of PROGRAMS inside the Makefile. These binaries are compiled with the libgloss-htif library, which implements a minimal set of useful syscalls for bare-metal binaries. Then when you run make, all of the programs inside tests will be compiled into .riscv ELF binaries, which can be used with the simulator as described above.

# Enter Tests directory
cd tests
make

# Enter Verilator or VCS directory
cd ../sims/verilator
make run-binary BINARY=../../tests/hello.riscv

Note

On multi-core configurations, only hart (hardware thread) 0 executes the main() function. All other harts execute the secondary __main() function, which defaults to a busy loop. To run a multi-threaded workload on a Verilator/VCS simulation, override __main() with your own code. More details can be found here

2.1.6. Makefile Variables and Commands

You can get a list of useful Makefile variables and commands available from the Verilator or VCS directories. simply run make help:

# Enter Verilator directory
cd sims/verilator
make help

# Enter VCS directory
cd sims/vcs
make help

2.1.7. Simulating A Custom Project

If you later create your own project, you can use environment variables to build an alternate configuration.

In order to construct the simulator with our custom design, we run the following command within the simulator directory:

make SBT_PROJECT=... MODEL=... VLOG_MODEL=... MODEL_PACKAGE=... CONFIG=... CONFIG_PACKAGE=... GENERATOR_PACKAGE=... TB=... TOP=...

Each of these make variables correspond to a particular part of the design/codebase and are needed so that the make system can correctly build and make a RTL simulation.

The SBT_PROJECT is the build.sbt project that holds all of the source files and that will be run during the RTL build.

The MODEL and VLOG_MODEL are the top-level class names of the design. Normally, these are the same, but in some cases these can differ (if the Chisel class differs than what is emitted in the Verilog).

The MODEL_PACKAGE is the Scala package (in the Scala code that says package ...) that holds the MODEL class.

The CONFIG is the name of the class used for the parameter config while the CONFIG_PACKAGE is the Scala package it resides in.

The GENERATOR_PACKAGE is the Scala package that holds the Generator class that elaborates the design.

The TB is the name of the Verilog wrapper that connects the TestHarness to VCS/Verilator for simulation.

Finally, the TOP variable is used to distinguish between the top-level of the design and the TestHarness in our system. For example, in the normal case, the MODEL variable specifies the TestHarness as the top-level of the design. However, the true top-level design, the SoC being simulated, is pointed to by the TOP variable. This separation allows the infrastructure to separate files based on the harness or the SoC top level.

Common configurations of all these variables are packaged using a SUB_PROJECT make variable. Therefore, in order to simulate a simple Rocket-based example system we can use:

make SUB_PROJECT=yourproject
./simulator-<yourproject>-<yourconfig> ...

Finally, in the generated-src/<...>-<package>-<config>/ directory resides all of the collateral while the generated Verilog source files resides in generated-src/<...>-<package>-<config>/gen-collateral for the build/simulation. Specifically, for CONFIG=RocketConfig the SoC top-level (TOP) Verilog file is ChipTop.sv while the (Model) file is TestHarness.sv.

2.1.8. Fast Memory Loading

The simulator loads the program binary over a simulated serial line. This can be quite slow if there is a lot of static data, so the simulator also allows data to be loaded from a file directly into the DRAM model. Loadmem files should be ELF files. In the most common use case, this can be the binary.

make run-binary BINARY=test.riscv LOADMEM=test.riscv

Usually the LOADMEM ELF is the same as the BINARY ELF, so LOADMEM=1 can be used as a shortcut.

make run-binary BINARY=test.riscv LOADMEM=1

2.1.9. Generating Waveforms

If you would like to extract waveforms from the simulation, run the command make debug instead of just make.

A special target that automatically generates the waveform file for a specific test is also available.

make run-binary-debug BINARY=test.riscv

For a Verilator simulation, this will generate a vcd file (vcd is a standard waveform representation file format) that can be loaded to any common waveform viewer. An open-source vcd-capable waveform viewer is GTKWave.

For a VCS simulation, this will generate an fsdb file that can be loaded to fsdb-supported waveform viewers. If you have Synopsys licenses, we recommend using the Verdi waveform viewer.

2.1.10. Visualizing Chipyard SoCs

During verilog creation, a graphml file is emitted that will allow you to visualize your Chipyard SoC as a diplomacy graph.

To view the graph, first download a viewer such as yEd.

The *.graphml file will be located in generated-src/<...>/. Open the file in the graph viewer. To get a clearer view of the SoC, switch to “hierarchical” view. For yEd, this would be done by selecting layout -> hierarchical, and then choosing “Ok” without changing any settings.

2.1.11. Additional Verilator Options

When building the verilator simulator there are some additional options:

make VERILATOR_THREADS=8 NUMACTL=1

The VERILATOR_THREADS=<num> option enables the compiled Verilator simulator to use <num> parallel threads. On a multi-socket machine, you will want to make sure all threads are on the same socket by using NUMACTL=1 to enable numactl. By enabling this, you will use Chipyard’s numa_prefix wrapper, which is a simple wrapper around numactl that runs your verilated simulator like this: $(numa_prefix) ./simulator-<name> <simulator-args>. Note that both these flags are mutually exclusive, you can use either independently (though it makes sense to use NUMACTL just with VERILATOR_THREADS=8 during a Verilator simulation).

2.1.12. Speeding up your RTL Simulation by 2x!

There are many cases when your custom module interfaces with Tilelink (e.g., when you write a custom accelerator). Wrong interfaces with Tilelink can cause the SoC to hang and can be tricky to debug. To help deal with these situations, you can add hardware modules called Tilelink monitors into your SoC that will fire assertions when wrong Tilelink messages are sent. However, these modules can significantly slow down the speed of your RTL simulation.

These modules are added to the SoC as a default and users have to manually remove these modules by adding the below line into your config.

new freechips.rocketchip.subsystem.WithoutTLMonitors ++

For instance:

class FastRTLSimRocketConfig extends Config(
  new freechips.rocketchip.subsystem.WithoutTLMonitors ++
  new chipyard.RocketConfig)