Syncopation

Syncopation is an open-source tool-flow that automatically instruments arbitrary circuits synthesized with LegUp HLS to enable adaptive clock management.

Our flow is integrated within the standard LegUp flow to automatically generate compatible Verilog RTL and clock management resources.

Publications available soon.

Installing dependencies

LegUp

LeFlow was built to be compatible with LegUp 4.0. We recommend downloading the virtual machine available at legup.eecg.utoronto.ca.

Syncopation Setup

Once this project has been cloned, you can install the Syncopation tool and dependencies using the following command:

pip3 install -e .

To test, type syncopation into the terminal to obtain the help message:

Syncopation

Usage:
    syncopation make [--no_synth_directives] [--add_synth_directives] [--no_sync_hardware] [--pipeline]
    syncopation modelsim [--log=<LOG_FILE>]
    syncopation synth [--log=<LOG_FILE>] [--enhanced_synthesis] [--no_synthesis] [--no_sta]
    syncopation timing
    syncopation -h|--help

Options:
    -h --help               Show this screen
    --no_synth_directives   No annotations in generated RTL for Syncopation circuits
    --add_synth_directives  Add synthesis directives to baseline circuit
    --no_sync_hardware      No syncopation DMs, clock generator
    --pipeline              Pipeline the divisor selection logic; use conservative predict
    --enhanced_synthesis    If no enhanced synthesis constraints are found, generate them. If found, resynthesize
    --no_synthesis          Perform performance eval without resynthesizing design
    --no_sta                Perform synthesis without performance eval/fine-grained sta
    --log=<LOG_FILE>        Modelsim log file generated by simulation and used to assess Syncopation performance

Getting Started

Running a single example

To get started with syncopation, try the following:

Enter the design directory (i.e. Legup-4.0/examples/chstone/adpcm) of any design you would like to synthesize.
To generate Syncopation hardware from C code, run

syncopation make
To test generated hardware using Modelsim, run

syncopation modelsim
To synthesize the above example, run

syncopation synth
To run synthesis with enhanced synthesis, run

syncopation synth --enhanced_synthesis

Once to generate the constraints file, and again run

syncopation synth --enhanced_synthesis

Syncopation Settings

If you are interested in changing some of the default syncopation parameters, take a look at settings.py.

Default Parameters:

Default Syncopation parameters are set in src/settings.py.

This file includes settings for the system Python Path, the pll frequency (which corresponds to a directory in src/pll), the number of bits in the bit clock generator counter, and verbosity messages.

Contributors

Kahlan Gibson - kahlangibson-at-ece.ubc.ca
Esther Roorda
Daniel Holanda Noronha
Steve Wilton

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.txt file for details

kahlangibson / Syncopation