Tools - 2021.1 English

AI Engine Kernel Coding Best Practices Guide (UG1079)

Document ID
UG1079
Release Date
2021-07-19
Version
2021.1 English

Vitis Integrated Design Environment

The Vitis™ integrated design environment (IDE) can be used to target system programming of Xilinx devices including, Versal devices. It supports development of single and multiple AI Engine kernel applications. The following features are available in the tool.

  • An optimizing C/C++ compiler that compiles the kernels and graph code making all of the necessary connections, placements, and checks to ensure proper functioning on the device.
  • A cycle accurate simulator, accelerated functional simulator, and profiling tools.
  • A powerful debugging environment that works in both simulation and hardware environments. Various views, such as, variables view, disassembly view, memory view, register view, and pipeline view are available.

Vitis Command Line Tools

Command line tools are available to build, simulate, and generate output files and reports.

  • The AI Engine compiler compiles kernels and graph code into ELF files that are run on the AI Engine processors.
  • The AI Engine simulator and x86simulator are tools for cycle approximate simulation and functional simulation respectively.
  • The cross compiler for Arm® Core is provided for PS code compilation.
  • The Vitis compiler is the system compilation and linking tool for integrating whole system together.
  • The Vitis Analyzer IDE is available for report viewing and analysis of the output files and reports generated by the command line tools.

The Versal ACAP AI Engine Programming Environment User Guide (UG1076) contains a wealth of information on the design flow and tools' usage.