Vicuna - a RISC-V Zve32x Vector Coprocessor

Vicuna is an open-source 32-bit integer vector coprocessor written in SystemVerilog that implements the RISC-V "V" extension (presently, the v0.10 draft of the soon-to-be-ratified specification). The vector core is heavily parametrizable and primarily targets FPGAs, although patches for ASIC support are welcome.

Vicuna is a coprocessor and thus requires a main processor with a suitable interface. Currently, a modified version of the Ibex core or the CV32E40X core serves as the main core. Support for further RISC-V CPUs is under development.

Vicuna is an integer vector coprocessor and supports element widths of 8, 16, and 32 bits. Note that Vicuna currently does not have a floating-point unit and hence does not support the floating-point vector instructions of the RISC-V V extension.

Vicuna is under active development, and contributions are welcome!

Publication

If you use Vicuna in academic work, please cite our publication:

@InProceedings{platzer_et_al:LIPIcs.ECRTS.2021.1,
  author =  {Platzer, Michael and Puschner, Peter},
  title =   {{Vicuna: A Timing-Predictable RISC-V Vector Coprocessor for Scalable Parallel Computation}},
  booktitle =   {33rd Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 2021)},
  pages =   {1:1--1:18},
  series =  {Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =    {978-3-95977-192-4},
  ISSN =    {1868-8969},
  year =    {2021},
  volume =  {196},
  editor =  {Brandenburg, Bj\"{o}rn B.},
  publisher =   {Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address = {Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =     {https://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2021/13932},
  URN =     {urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-139323},
  doi =     {10.4230/LIPIcs.ECRTS.2021.1},
  annote =  {Keywords: Real-time Systems, Vector Processors, RISC-V}
}

Getting Started

This repository uses submodules. After cloning the repository, run following command in the top directory to initialize the submodules:

git submodule update --init --recursive

Compilation toolchain

In order to compile programs for Vicuna, you need a RISC-V compiler which supports the RISC-V V extension (e.g., LLVM or GCC). Currently, this extension is not ratified, and thus only experimental support is available, which is not included in the official releases. Therefore, one needs to compile the desired compilation toolchain with support for the V extension from source.

Execute the following shell commands to compile the RISC-V GNU toolchain with V extension support enabled. Note that /desired/installation/path should be replaced with the path where the toolchain should be installed. Please refer to the documentation in the RISC-V GNU toolchain repository for the required prerequisites for compiling the toolchain.

git clone https://github.com/riscv/riscv-gnu-toolchain -b rvv-intrinsic
cd riscv-gnu-toolchain
git submodule update --init --recursive
mkdir build && cd build
../configure --prefix=/desired/installation/path
make

Simulation

The sim/ subdirectory contains scripts for simulating Vicuna with either Verilator or xsim (the default simulator in Vivado).

Synthesis

The demo/ subdirectory contains a minimalist demo design for Xilinx FPGAs.

Configuration

Vicuna allows for extensive parametrization. In particular, the width of the vector registers, of the memory interface, and of the datapaths of the functional units can be configured independently.

License

Unless otherwise noted, everything in this repository is licensed under the ISC license, a permissive free software license that is functionally equivalent to the MIT and the simplified 2-clause BSD license (with some language deemed unnecessary removed).

The Ibex core (included in this repository as a submodule) is licensed under the Apache License, see the Ibex repository for details.

The CV32E40X core (included in this repository as a submodule) is licensed under the Solderpad Hardware License, see the CV32E40X repository for details.

Mousavikia / vicuna