Adds timing support to Verilator. It makes it possible to use delays,
event controls within processes (not just at the start), wait
statements, and forks.
Building a design with those constructs requires a compiler that
supports C++20 coroutines (GCC 10, Clang 5).
The basic idea is to have processes and tasks with delays/event controls
implemented as C++20 coroutines. This allows us to suspend and resume
them at any time.
There are five main runtime classes responsible for managing suspended
coroutines:
* `VlCoroutineHandle`, a wrapper over C++20's `std::coroutine_handle`
with move semantics and automatic cleanup.
* `VlDelayScheduler`, for coroutines suspended by delays. It resumes
them at a proper simulation time.
* `VlTriggerScheduler`, for coroutines suspended by event controls. It
resumes them if its corresponding trigger was set.
* `VlForkSync`, used for syncing `fork..join` and `fork..join_any`
blocks.
* `VlCoroutine`, the return type of all verilated coroutines. It allows
for suspending a stack of coroutines (normally, C++ coroutines are
stackless).
There is a new visitor in `V3Timing.cpp` which:
* scales delays according to the timescale,
* simplifies intra-assignment timing controls and net delays into
regular timing controls and assignments,
* simplifies wait statements into loops with event controls,
* marks processes and tasks with timing controls in them as
suspendable,
* creates delay, trigger scheduler, and fork sync variables,
* transforms timing controls and fork joins into C++ awaits
There are new functions in `V3SchedTiming.cpp` (used by `V3Sched.cpp`)
that integrate static scheduling with timing. This involves providing
external domains for variables, so that the necessary combinational
logic gets triggered after coroutine resumption, as well as statements
that need to be injected into the design eval function to perform this
resumption at the correct time.
There is also a function that transforms forked processes into separate
functions.
See the comments in `verilated_timing.h`, `verilated_timing.cpp`,
`V3Timing.cpp`, and `V3SchedTiming.cpp`, as well as the internals
documentation for more details.
Signed-off-by: Krzysztof Bieganski <kbieganski@antmicro.com>
Various optimizations to speed up MTasks coarsening (which is the long
pole in the multi-threaded scheduling of very large designs).
The biggest impact ones:
- Use efficient hand written Pairing Heaps for implementing priority
queues and the scoreboard, instead of the old SortByValueMap. This
helps us avoid having to sort a lot of merge candidates that we will
never actually consider and helps a lot in performance.
- Remove unnecessary associative containers and store data structures
(the heap nodes in particular) directly in the object they relate to.
This eliminates a huge amount of lookups and helps a lot in
performance.
- Distribute storage for SiblingMC instances into the LogicMTask
instances, and combine with the sibling maps. This again eliminates
hash table lookups and makes storage structures smaller.
- Remove some now bidirectional edge maps, keep only the forward map.
There are also some other smaller optimizations:
- Replaced more unnecessary dynamic_casts with static_casts
- Templated some functions/classes to reduce the number of static
branches in loops.
- Improves sorting of edges for sibling candidate creation
- Various micro-optimizations here and there
This speeds up MTask coarsening by 3.8x on a large design, which
translates to a 2.5x speedup of the ordering pass in multi-threaded
mode. (Combined with the earlier optimizations, ordering is now 3x
faster.)
Due to the elimination of a lot of the auxiliary data structures, and
ensuring a minimal size for the necessary ones, memory consumption of
the MTask coarsening is also reduced (measured up to 4.4x reduction
though the accuracy of this is low).
The algorithm is identical except for minor alterations of the order
some candidates are added or removed, this can cause perturbation in the
output due to tied scores being broken based on IDs.
Various optimizations to speed up MTasks coarsening (which is the long
pole in the multi-threaded scheduling of very large designs).
The biggest impact ones:
- Use efficient hand written Pairing Heaps for implementing priority
queues and the scoreboard, instead of the old SortByValueMap. This
helps us avoid having to sort a lot of merge candidates that we will
never actually consider and helps a lot in performance.
- Remove unnecessary associative containers and store data structures
(the heap nodes in particular) directly in the object they relate to.
This eliminates a huge amount of lookups and helps a lot in
performance.
- Distribute storage for SiblingMC instances into the LogicMTask
instances, and combine with the sibling maps. This again eliminates
hash table lookups and makes storage structures smaller.
- Remove some now bidirectional edge maps, keep only the forward map.
There are also some other smaller optimizations:
- Replaced more unnecessary dynamic_casts with static_casts
- Templated some functions/classes to reduce the number of static
branches in loops.
- Improves sorting of edges for sibling candidate creation
- Various micro-optimizations here and there
This speeds up MTask coarsening by 3.8x on a large design, which
translates to a 2.5x speedup of the ordering pass in multi-threaded
mode. (Combined with the earlier optimizations, ordering is now 3x
faster.)
Due to the elimination of a lot of the auxiliary data structures, and
ensuring a minimal size for the necessary ones, memory consumption of
the MTask coarsening is also reduced (measured up to 4.4x reduction
though the accuracy of this is low).
The algorithm is identical except for minor alterations of the order
some candidates are added or removed, this can cause perturbation in the
output due to tied scores being broken based on IDs.
* Tests: Add a test to reproduce #3509
* Tests: Compile without tautological-compare check because bit op tree optimization is disabled in the test.
* Internals: Dedup code. No functional change is intended.
* Fix#3509.
"2'b10 == (2'b11 & {1'b0, val[0]})" and "2'b10 != (2'b11 & {1'b0, val[0]})" were
wrongly optimized to "!val[0]" and "val[0]" respectively.
Now properly optimize them to 1'b0 and 1'b1.
* Commentary
* Commentary: Update Changes
* Tests: Add a test to reproduce #3470
* Update LSB during return path of traversal. No functional change is intended.
* Introduce LeafInfo::m_msb
* Update LeafInfo::m_msb when visitin AstCCast
* Internals: Add comment, reorder. No functional change is intended.
* Delete explicit from copy constructor to fix build error.
* Update Changes
* Internals: Remove unused parameter. No functional change is intended.
* Tests: Add explanation to t_const_opt.
VCD tracing is now parallelized using the same thread pool as the model.
We achieve this by breaking the top level trace functions into multiple
top level functions (as many as --threads), and after emitting the time
stamp to the VCD file on the main thread, we execute the tracing
functions in parallel on the same thread pool as the model (which we
pass to the trace file during registration), tracing into a secondary
per thread buffer. The main thread will then stitch (memcpy) the buffers
together into the output file.
This makes the `--trace-threads` option redundant with `--trace`, which
now only affects `--trace-fst`. FST tracing uses the previous offloading
scheme.
This obviously helps a lot in VCD tracing performance, and I have seen
better than Amdahl speedup, namely I get 3.9x on XiangShan 4T (2.7x on
OpenTitan 4T).
V3MergeCond merges consecutive conditional `_ = cond ? _ : _` and
`if (cond) ...` statements. This patch adds an analysis and ordering
phase that moves statements with identical conditions closer to each
other, in order to enable more merging opportunities. This in turn
eliminates a lot of repeated conditionals which reduced dynamic branch
count and branch misprediction rate. Observed 6.5% improvement on
multi-threaded large designs, at the cost of less than 2% increase in
Verilation speed.
This is a major re-design of the way code is scheduled in Verilator,
with the goal of properly supporting the Active and NBA regions of the
SystemVerilog scheduling model, as defined in IEEE 1800-2017 chapter 4.
With this change, all internally generated clocks should simulate
correctly, and there should be no more need for the `clock_enable` and
`clocker` attributes for correctness in the absence of Verilator
generated library models (`--lib-create`).
Details of the new scheduling model and algorithm are provided in
docs/internals.rst.
Implements #3278
Some cases of warnings about the use of blocking and non-blocking
assignments in combinational vs sequential processes were suppressed in
a way that is inconsistent with the *actual* current execution model of
Verilator. Turning these back on to, well, warn the user that these might
cause unexpected results. V5 will clean these up, but until then err on
the side of caution.
Fixes#864.
Static variable initializers run before initial blocks, so use an
explicitly different procedure type for them. This also enables us to
now raise errors for assignments to const variables in initial blocks.
At the end of V3Param, fix up the module list to be topologically
sorted. We need to do this at the end as a later instantiation of a
recursive module might instantiate an earlier specialization, which we
cannot know until we processed everything. The rest of the compiler
depends on the module list being topologically sorted.
Fixes#3393
The --prof-threads option has been split into two independent options:
1. --prof-exec, for collecting verilator_gantt and other execution
related profiling data, and
2. --prof-pgo, for collecting data needed for PGO
The implementation of execution profiling is extricated from
VlThreadPool and is now a separate class VlExecutionProfiler. This means
--prof-exec can now be used for single-threaded models (though it does
not measure a lot of things just yet). For consistency VerilatedProfiler
is renamed VlPgoProfiler. Both VlExecutionProfiler and VlPgoProfiler are
in verilated_profiler.{h/cpp}, but can be used completely independently.
Also re-worked the execution profile format so it now only emits events
without holding onto any temporaries. This is in preparation for some
future optimizations that would be hindered by the introduction of function
locals via AstText.
Also removed the Barrier event. Clearing the profile buffers is not
notably more expensive as the profiling records are trivially
destructible.
While GNU 'ar' supports '@' to specify a file, BSD 'ar' does not.
The max line length can be handled by 'xargs' instead, which will know
to break up the command. In case there are multiple calls, only build
the index (specified with '-s') once in a later call.
Using the 'forceable' directive in a configuration file, or the /*
verilator forceable */ metacomment on a variable declaration will
generate additional public signals that allow the specified signals to
be forced/released from the C++ code.
Trace initialization (tracep->decl* functions) used to explicitly pass
the complete hierarchical names of signals as string constants. This
contains a lot of redundancy (path prefixes), does not scale well with
large designs and resulted in .rodata sections (the string constants) in
ELF executables being extremely large.
This patch changes the API of trace initialization that allows pushing
and popping name prefixes as we walk the hierarchy tree, which are
prepended to declared signal names at run-time during trace
initialization. This in turn allows us to emit repeat path/name
components only once, effectively removing all duplicate path prefixes.
On SweRV EH1 this reduces the .rodata section in a --trace build by 94%.
Additionally, trace declarations are now emitted in lexical order by
hierarchical signal names, and the top level trace initialization
function respects --output-split-ctrace.
Verilator should now correctly re-evaluate any logic that depends on
state set in a DPI exported function, including if the DPI export is
called outside eval, or if the DPI export is called from a DPI import.
Whenever the design contains a DPI exported function that sets a
non-local variable, we create a global __Vdpi_export_trigger flag, that
is set in the body of the DPI export, and make all variables set in any
DPI exported functions dependent on this flag (this ensures correct
ordering and change detection on state set in DPI exports when needed).
The DPI export trigger flag is cleared at the end of eval, which ensured
calls to DPI exports outside of eval are detected. Additionally the
ordering is modifies to assume that any call to a 'context' DPI import
might call DPI exports by adding an edge to the ordering graph from the
logic vertex containing the call to the DPI import to the DPI export
trigger variable vertex (note the standard does not allow calls to DPI
exports from DPI imports that were not imported with 'context', so we
do not enforce ordering on those).
All parameters that are required in the output are now emitted as
'static constexpr, except for string or array of strings parameters,
which are still emitted as 'static const' (required as std::string is
not a literal type, so cannot be constexpr). This simplifies handling
of parameters and supports 'real' parameters.
This patch partitions AstCFuncs under an AstNodeModule based on which
header files they require for their implementation, and emits them
into separate files based on the distinct dependency sets. This helps
with incremental recompilation of the output C++.
The -G option now correctly parses simple integer literals as signed
numbers, which is in line with the standard and is significant when
overriding parameters without a type specifier.
Fixes#3060
V3Simulate reuses allocated AstConst nodes for efficiency, however this
used to be implemented in a way that required a deep copy of a
std::unorderd_map<_, std::deque<_>>, which was quite inefficient when it
grew large. The free list is now managed without any copying. This takes
the V3Table pass from taking 12s to 0.2s on SweRV EH1.
We incorrectly treated two different struct types the same when passed
as an actual parameter to a `parameter type` parameter in an instance,
if the actual parameter expression both hash to the same value and the
structs have the same struct name. This is now corrected.
Fixes#3055.
This patch implements #3032. Verilator creates a module representing the
SystemVerilog $root scope (V3LinkLevel::wrapTop). Until now, this was
called the "TOP" module, which also acted as the user instantiated model
class. Syms used to hold a pointer to this root module, but hold
instances of any submodule. This patch renames this root scope module
from "TOP" to "$root", and introduces a separate model class which is
now an interface class. As the root module is no longer the user
interface class, it can now be made an instance of Syms, just like any
other submodule. This allows absolute references into the root module to
avoid an additional pointer indirection resulting in a potential speedup
(about 1.5% on OpenTitan). The model class now also contains all non
design specific generated code (e.g.: eval loops, trace config, etc),
which additionally simplifies Verilator internals.
Please see the updated documentation for the model interface changes.
Teach V3Localize how to localize variables that are used in multiple
functions, if in all functions where they are used, they are always
written in whole before being consumed. This allows a lot more variables
to be localized (+20k variables on OpenTitan - when building without
--trace), and can cause significant performance improvement (OpenTitan
simulates 8.5% - build single threaded and withuot --trace).
What previously used to be per module static constants created in
V3Table and V3Prelim are now merged globally within the whole model and
emitted as part of a separate constant pool. Members of the constant
pool are global variables which are declared lazily when used (similar to
loose methods).
This patch introduces the concept of 'loose' methods, which semantically
are methods, but are declared as global functions, and are passed an
explicit 'self' pointer. This enables these methods to be declared
outside the class, only when they are needed, therefore removing the
header dependency. The bulk of the emitted model implementation now uses
loose methods.
A few names were incorrectly mangled, which made --protect-ids produce
invalid output when certain SV class constructs were uses. Now fixed and
added a few extra tests to catch this.
CFuncs only used to be split at procedure (always/initial/final block),
which on occasion can still yield huge output files if they have large
procedures. This patch make CFuncs split at statement boundaries within
procedures. This has the potential to help a lot, but still does not
help if there are huge statements within procedures.
** Add simulation context (VerilatedContext) to allow multiple fully independent
models to be in the same process. Please see the updated examples.
** Add context->time() and context->timeInc() API calls, to set simulation time.
These now are recommended in place of the legacy sc_time_stamp().
This allows compiling the run-time library with optimization even when OPT_FAST is not used in order to imporove model build speed, possibly during debug cycles.
This adds the flag --generate-waivefile <filename>. This will generate
a verilator config file with the proper lint_off statemens to turn off
warnings emitted during this particular run.
This feature can be used to start with using Verilator as linter and
systematically capture all known lint warning for further
elimination. It hopefully helps people turning of -Wno-fatal or
-Wno-lint and gradually improve their code base.
Signed-off-by: Stefan Wallentowitz <stefan.wallentowitz@hm.edu>
--output-split is now on by default with value 20000.
--output-split-cfuncs and --output-split-ctrace now defaults to the
value of --output-split unless explicitly specified.
Wilson Snyder
Geza Lore
Krzysztof Bieganski
Yutetsu TAKATSUKASA
Julien Margetts
Julie Schwartz
Unai Martinez-Corral
Rafal Kapuscik
Peter Monsson
Stefan Wallentowitz
Vassilis Papaefstathiou
Yossi Nivin