2. Simulation

Chipyard supports two classes of simulation:

  1. Software RTL simulation using commercial or open-source (Verilator) RTL simulators

  2. FPGA-accelerated full-system simulation using FireSim

Software RTL simulators of Chipyard designs run at O(1 KHz), but compile quickly and provide full waveforms. Conversely, FPGA-accelerated simulators run at O(100 MHz), making them appropriate for booting an operating system and running a complete workload, but have multi-hour compile times and poorer debug visibility.

Click next to see how to run a simulation.