The manual for the BLKANDNBLK warning describes that it is safe to
disable that error if the updated ranges are non-overlapping. This
however was not true (see the added t_nba_mixed_update* tests).
In this patch we change V3Delayed to use a new ShadowVarMasked
scheme for variables that have mixed blocking and non-blocking
updates (or the FlagUnique scheme for unpacked variables), which
is in fact safe to use when the updated parts are non-overlapping.
Furthermore, mixed assignments are safe as far as scheduling is
concerned if either:
- They are to independent parts (bits/members/etc) (with this patch)
- Or if the blocking assignment is in clocked (or suspendable) logic.
The risk in scheduling is a race between the Post scheduled NBA
commit, and blocking assignments in combinational logic, which might
order incorrectly.
The second point highlights that we can handle stuff like this safely,
which is sometimes used in testbenches:
```systemverilog
always @(posedge clk) begin
if ($time == 0) a = 0;
end
always @(posedge clk) begin
if ($time > 0) a <= 2;
end
````
The only dangerous case is:
```systemverilog
always @(posedge clk) foo[idx] <= val;
assign foo[0] = bar;
```
Whit this patch, this will still resolve fine at run-time if 'idx' is
never zero, but might resolve incorrectly if 'idx' is zero.
With the above in mind, the BLKANDNBLK warning is now only issued if:
- We can't prove that the assignments are to non-overlapping bits
- And the blocking assignment is in combinational logic
These are the cases that genuinely require user attention to resolve.
With this patch, there are no more BLKANDNBLK warnings in the RTLMeter
designs.
Fixes#6122.
Somewhat commonly, there is code out there that compares an expression (or
variable) against many different constants, e.g. a one-hot decoder:
```systemverilog
assign oneHot = {x == 3, x == 2, x == 1, x == 0};
```
If the width of the expression is sufficiently large, this can blow up
a GCC pass and take an egregious amount of memory and time to compile.
Adding a new DFG pass that will generate a cheap one-hot decoder:
to compute:
```systemverilog
wire [$bits(x)-1:0] idx = <the expression being compared many times>
reg tab [1<<$bits(x)] = '{default: 0};
reg [$bits(x)-1:0] pre = '0;
always_comb begin
tab[pre] = 0;
tab[idx] = 1;
pre = idx ; // This assignment marked to avoid a false UNOPFTLAT
end
```
We then replace the comparisons `x == CONST` with `tab[CONST]`.
This is generally performance neutral, but avoids the compile time and memory
blowup with GCC (128GB+ -> 1GB in one example).
We do not apply this if the comparisons seem to be part of a `COMPARE ?
val : COND` conditional tree, which the C++ compilers can turn into jump
tables.
This enables all XiangShan configurations from RTLMeter to now build with GCC,
so in this patch we enabled those in the nightly runs.
An ordering constraint between NBA commit blocks ('Post' logic) and the
written variable were previously added as soft constraints (cutable
edges). However these are required for correctness, so if it ever is
cut we will have incorrect simulation results.
Change these into hard constraints instead. This necessitates adding a
flag on AstVar to ignore special variables constructed during V3Delayed
that might otherwise appear as degenerate logic loops. E.g.:
if (VdlySet) {
VdlySet = 0; // <- This write to VdlySet can and must be ignored
LHS = VdlyVal;
}
No functional change, but you might get an error if this constraint was
ever violated. (Theoretically it should never be, as these variables
were inserted in a way that does not require violating these constraints
...)
Wilson Snyder
Geza Lore
Krzysztof Sychla
Todd Strader
Bartłomiej Chmiel
Ryszard Rozak
Zhou Shen
Mariusz Glebocki
github action
Krzysztof Bieganski
Arkadiusz Kozdra