Introduction on how to connect tiles in the AIE physical dialect
Define the AIE tiles you want to communicate between. Here Tile (7,1) will be the source and (7,2) the destination.
%t71 = AIE.tile(7, 1) // (Column, Row)
%t72 = AIE.tile(7, 2)
%t73 = AIE.tile(7, 3)
Set up a switchboxes to connect the AIE Tile DMA to the stream:
%sw71 = AIE.switchbox(%t71) {
AIE.connect<"DMA" : 0, "North" : 1>
}
The AIE.connect function must exist inside an AIE.switchbox or AIE.shim_mux operation. The numbers designate the source and destination channel number of the stream that we are trying to connect.
The switchbox in tile (7,1) connects the Tile DMA channel 0 to North channel 1. If we define a switchbox in tile (7,2) as so:
%sw72 = AIE.switchbox(%t72) {
AIE.connect<"South" : 1, "DMA" : 0>
}
The stream will automatically be connected, due to the fact that North 1 in tile (7,1) is connected to South 1 in tile (7,2). We can create multiple connections in the AIE switchbox:
%sw71 = AIE.switchbox(%t71) {
AIE.connect<"DMA" : 0, "North" : 0>
AIE.connect<"North" : 2, "DMA" : 1>
AIE.connect<"East" : 3, "West" : 2>
}
as long as we don’t have duplicate destinations.
Shim tiles are special tiles at row 0 of the AIE array. There are two variants of Shim tiles, Shim NoC tile and Shim PL tile. You can connect to the device’s PL through PLIO in any Shim tile. Shim DMAs are present in shim NoC tiles to transfer data between DDR and the AIE tile array.
Shim DMAs and some PLIO must be connected through a ShimMux before connecting to the rest of the array with a switchbox operation. You can configure a switch in the Shim NoC tile using ‘shim_mux’ in addition to the switchbox operations:
%t70 = AIE.tile(7, 0) // (Column, Row)
%sw70 = AIE.shim_mux(%t70) {
AIE.connect<"North" : 2, "DMA" : 1>
}
Then, we can connect the DMA to the rest of the array like so:
%s70 = AIE.switchbox(%t70) {
AIE.connect<"North" : 0, "South" : 2>
}
In order to read and write from the DDR using all available channels, a shim_mux can be created like so:
%sw70 = AIE.shim_mux(%t70) {
AIE.connect<"DMA" : 0, "North" : 3> \\ read
AIE.connect<"DMA" : 1, "North" : 7> \\ read
AIE.connect<"North" : 2, "DMA" : 0> \\ write
AIE.connect<"North" : 3, "DMA" : 1> \\ write
}
The shim_mux always connects to a switchbox to its north, located within the same tile. The shim_mux connects the Shim DMA channels to specific stream channels: i.e. exiting the array (write), streams 2 and 3 from the switchbox connect to Shim DMA channels, but entering the array (read), streams 3 and 7 to the switchbox connect from Shim DMA channels. The shim_mux is then connected to the switchbox to route the streams to/from the array as shown above.
It is important to note how the shim_mux is modeled in MLIR compared to libXAIEV1. While the shim_mux is modeled in MLIR matching the convention of a switchbox, due to the fact that it exists in the same tile as the switchbox, the channel directions are inverted (North to South) when lowered to libXAIEV1.
In order to connect larger distances, AIE flows exist so that we don’t have to declare a switchbox for each tile. Here we create a flow from the stream in tile (7,1) to the DMA in tile (7,3). Then, we create the flow another flow from the DMA in tile (7,3) to the stream in (7,1). We now don’t have to define any switchbox in tile (7,2).
AIE.flow(%t71, "South" : 3, %t73, "DMA" : 0)
AIE.flow(%t73, "DMA" : 1, %t71, "South" : 2)
Flows can also be used to connect Shim DMAs to Tile DMAs over a distance:
AIE.flow(%t70, "DMA" : 0, %t73, "DMA" : 0)
AIE.flow(%t73, "DMA" : 1, %t70, "DMA" : 0)
Similarly, flows can be used to connect to/from the PL over a distance:
AIE.flow(%t70, "PLIO" : 0, %t73, "DMA" : 0)
AIE.flow(%t73, "DMA" : 1, %t70, "PLIO" : 4)
We support the visualization of routed modules in json format.
Here is an example of how users can route the test/create-flows/broadcase.mlir test, followed by converting the routed module into json format for visualization.
cd ${path-to-mlir-aie}/tools/aie-routing-command-line
aie-opt --aie-create-pathfinder-flows --aie-find-flows ${path-to-mlir-aie}/test/create-flows/broadcast.mlir \
| aie-translate --aie-flows-to-json > example.json
python3 visualize.py -j example.json
This script creates a new directory ${path-to-mlir-aie}/tools/aie-routing-command-line/example containing a set of text files each visualizing one flow in the design.
Below is an example of visualizing the first flow of test/create-flows/broadcast.mlir.
┌─────┐ ┌─────┐ ₁ ┌─────┐ ┌─────┐
│ 0,0 │ │ 0,1 ├───┤ 0,2 │ │ 0,3 │
│ │ │ │ │ * D│ │ │
└─────┘ └───┬─┘ └─────┘ └─────┘
│¹
┌─────┐ ┌───┴─┐ ┌─────┐ ┌─────┐
│ 1,0 │ │ 1,1 │ │ 1,2 │ │ 1,3 │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ * D│
└─────┘ └───┬─┘ └─────┘ └───┬─┘
│¹ ↑¹
┌─────┐ ₂ ┌───┴─┐ ₁ ┌─────┐ ₁ ┌───┴─┐
→→→│ 2,0 ├→→→┤ 2,1 ├→→→┤ 2,2 ├→→→┤ 2,3 │
│S * │ │ │ │ * D│ │ │
└─┬─┬─┘ └─┬───┘ └───┬─┘ └─────┘
¹↓ │¹ ¹↓ │¹
┌─┴─┴─┐ ₁ ┌─┴───┐ ┌───┴─┐ ┌─────┐
│ 3,0 ├───┤ 3,1 │ │ 3,2 │ │ 3,3 │
│ │ │ * D│ │ │ │ │
└─┬─┬─┘ └─────┘ └───┬─┘ └─────┘
¹↓ │¹ │¹
┌─┴─┴─┐ ┌─────┐ ₁ ┌───┴─┐ ┌─────┐
│ 4,0 │ │ 4,1 ├───┤ 4,2 │ │ 4,3 │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
└─┬─┬─┘ └───┬─┘ └─────┘ └─────┘
¹↓ │¹ │¹
┌─┴─┴─┐ ₁ ┌───┴─┐ ┌─────┐ ┌─────┐
│ 5,0 ├───┤ 5,1 │ │ 5,2 │ │ 5,3 │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
└─┬─┬─┘ └─────┘ └─────┘ └─────┘
¹↓ │¹
┌─┴─┴─┐ ₂ ┌─────┐ ₂ ┌─────┐ ┌─────┐
│ 6,0 ├→→→┤ 6,1 ├→→→┤ 6,2 │ │ 6,3 │
│S * │ │ │ │ │ │ │
└─┬───┘ └─────┘ └─┬───┘ └─────┘
¹↓ ²↓
┌─┴───┐ ₁ ┌─────┐ ┌─┴───┐ ₁ ┌─────┐
│ 7,0 ├→→→┤ 7,1 │ │ 7,2 ├───┤ 7,3 │
│ │ │ * D│ │ │ │ │
└─────┘ └─────┘ └─┬───┘ └─┬───┘
¹↓ ¹│
┌─────┐ ┌─────┐ ┌─┴───┐ ┌─┴───┐
│ 8,0 │ │ 8,1 │ │ 8,2 │ │ 8,3 │
│ │ │ │ │ * D│ │ * D│
└─────┘ └─────┘ └─────┘ └─────┘
Each text file visualizes all flows in the design, while highlighting the current flow with arrows. Number on connection indicates the traffic in current direction. ‘S’ and ‘D’ annotate the sources and destinations of flows. Asterisks indicate the tiles in use.
For details on the usage of visualize.py please check out python3 visualize.py --help.