SST Interoperability Toolkit
Project description
SST Interoperability Toolkit
A toolkit to provide support for interoperability between Structural Simulation Toolkit (SST) and external hardware description languages (HDL).
Table of Contents
Requirements
The current version of SIT requires:
- SST Core 10.0.0+
- Python 3.6+
- CMake 3.18+
- GNU Make 3+
Additionally, supported HDLs have their own sets of requirements.
Supported HDLs
Note: For the sake of consistency, the languages, toolkits or libraries in the following categories will be simply labeled as HDL:
- hardware description languages (SystemVerilog, Verilog, VHDL, etc.)
- hardware level modeling languages (PyRTL, SystemC, etc.)
PyRTL
PyRTL provides a collection of classes for pythonic register-transfer level design, simulation, tracing, and testing suitable for teaching and research.
The library can be installed via pip: pip install pyrtl
.
SystemC
SystemC is a C++ library and a set of tools for hardware and system-level modeling and simulation.
The library can be installed by downloading the source and following their instructions.
Verilog
Verilog modules have the following requirements:
- cocotb, a coroutine based cosimulation library for writing VHDL and Verilog testbenches in Python.
- An HDL simulator (such as Icarus Verilog, Verilator, GHDL or other simulator)
Installation
The toolkit can be installed using pip:
$ pip install sst-it
The Python package ships with the header library required to interoperate with SST. To install the library, run the console script:
$ sit --install
Development
To set up the development version, clone the repository and create a virtual environment.
- Install the toolkit using pip:
pip install .
- Create a directory to store the binaries and change to it:
mkdir .build && cd .build
- Run the library CMakeFiles.txt:
cmake ../src/sit/cpp/
Usage
Boilerplate Code Generation
To establish interoperability between an SST model and an HDL module, a boilerplate SST component and HDL driver must be generated. The boilerplate layer establishes the configurations required for the interprocess communication (IPC) between the SST and the external HDL processes.
The boilerplate code generation library accepts arguments in a JSON format.
Library Parameters
Parameter | Description |
---|---|
hdl |
Name of the hardware description language. The string value must correspond to a supported HDL. Valid options are {"pyrtl"|"systemc"|"verilog"} |
config |
High level configuration parameters, including library names and locations of module files |
ports |
Description of the ports. Ports can be of type: "input", "output", "inout" |
Configuration Parameters
Parameter | Description | Type |
---|---|---|
config.ipc |
IPC method for the boilerplate layer | {"sock"|"zmq"} |
config.module_name |
Name of the module, i.e. SST Component name and HDL module name | str |
config.lib |
Name of the library, i.e. SST Component library name | str |
config.desc |
Description of the module | str |
config.lib_dir |
Location of the library | str |
config.module_dir |
Location of the module | str |
Port Parameters
Parameter | Description | Type |
---|---|---|
ports.input |
Array of input port objects | list[dict[str,str|int]] |
ports.output |
Array of output port objects | list[dict[str,str|int]] |
ports.inout |
Array of inout port objects | list[dict[str,str|int]] |
ports.{"input"|"output"|"inout"}.name |
Name of port | str |
ports.{"input"|"output"|"inout"}.type |
Data type of port | str |
ports.{"input"|"output"|"inout"}.len |
Buffer length of port | int |
The following is an example configuration:
config = {
"hdl": "verilog",
"config": {
"module_name": "ram",
"lib": "verilogsock",
"desc": "Demonstration of a Verilog hardware simulation in SST",
"module_dir": "../tests/verilog/",
},
"ports": {
"input": [
{"name": "address", "type": "bit", "len": 8},
{"name": "cs", "type": "int", "len": 1},
{"name": "we", "type": "int", "len": 1},
{"name": "oe", "type": "int", "len": 1},
{"name": "data_in", "type": "bit", "len": 8},
],
"output": [{"name": "data_out", "type": "bit", "len": 8}],
}
}
The configuration can be passed into the class constructor to generate the boilerplate layer.
from sit import SIT
sit_obj = SIT(config)
sit_obj.generate_boilerplate()
The boilerplate layer code will be generated and saved to the directory ./gen
.
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