AIE App with PL as HLS functional kernels

This example demonstrates the flow on how to connect aie Kernel to PL HLS functional Kernels and validate the design running on the AI Engine.

KEY CONCEPTS: AI Engine, Adaptive Data Flow, Graph, HLS Kernel functional model

KEYWORDS: aiecompiler, aiesimulator, stream_connect

This example demonstrates the flow on how to connect aie Kernel to PL HLS functional Kernels and validate the design running on the AI Engine. The PL kernels in this AIE design are simulated in the functional mode. The functional mode in v++ generates the SCTLM code for the HLS kernel. The functional model of the PL HLS kernel is applicable when user wants to speedup the emulation by compiling desired kernels in functional mode instead of the default RTL. In this example, there is one AIE kernel and three PL HLS kernels pl_kernels/mm2s.cpp, pl_kernels/s2mm.cpp and pl_kernels/polar_clip.cpp compiled in functional mode.

XO generation

During v++ compile flow, while creating hw_emu XO, the user provides a switch describing the intention to do a functional simulation that will generate XO with the SystemC wrapper on C code.

Input from the user

  1. Create a config file config <hw_emu_func.cfg> with following advanced compiler options:

[advanced]
param=compiler.emulationMode=func

  1. In the Makefile, following flag is added in the v++ flow while compiling kernel:

VPP_XO_FLAGS := --config hw_emu_func.cfg

Speedup Benchmark

Below is the runtime recorded for each suite of PL HLS kernels when compiled in functional mode vs the RTL. The speedup is observed as of 3x (approx).

Kernel

Runtime (s)

mm2s-polar_clip-s2mm FUNC

127.8

mm2s-polar_clip-s2mm RTL

414.26

Speedup:

3.24x

EXCLUDED PLATFORMS:

  • All Embedded Zynq Platforms, i.e zc702, zcu102 etc

  • AWS VU9P F1

  • Samsung SmartSSD Computation Storage Drive

  • Samsung U.2 SmartSSD

  • Versal VCK5000

  • All Xilinx DMA Platforms

  • xilinx_vck190_base_dfx

DESIGN FILES

Application code is located in the src directory. Accelerator binary files will be compiled to the xclbin directory. The xclbin directory is required by the Makefile and its contents will be filled during compilation. A listing of all the files in this example is shown below

data/golden.txt
data/input.txt
data/input1.txt
src/aie/graph.cpp
src/aie/graph.h
src/aie/include.h
src/aie/kernels.h
src/aie/kernels/classifiers/classify.cc
src/aie/kernels/decimators/hb27.cc
src/aie/kernels/interpolators/hb27_2i.cc
src/pl_kernels/mm2s.cpp
src/pl_kernels/polar_clip.cpp
src/pl_kernels/s2mm.cpp
src/sw/golden.h
src/sw/host.cpp
src/sw/host.h
src/sw/input.h

Access these files in the github repo by clicking here.

COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS

Once the environment has been configured, the application can be executed by

./aie_func_mode