Interpreting the Timeline Trace - 2021.2 English

Vitis Unified Software Platform Documentation: Application Acceleration Development (UG1393)
Document ID
UG1393
Release Date
2022-03-29
Version
2021.2 English

The Timeline Trace window displays host and device events on a common timeline. This information helps you understand details of application execution and identify potential areas for improvements. The Timeline Trace report has two main sections: Host and Device. The Host section shows the trace of all the activity originating from the host side. The Device section shows the activity of the CUs on the FPGA.

The report has the following structure:

  • Host
    OpenCL API Calls
    All OpenCL API calls are traced here. The activity time is measured from the host perspective.
    General
    All general OpenCL API calls such as clCreateProgramWithBinary, clCreateContext, and clCreateCommandQueue, are traced here.
    Queue
    OpenCL API calls that are associated with a specific command queue are traced here. This includes commands such as clEnqueueMigrateMemObjects, and clEnqueueNDRangeKernel. If the user application creates multiple command queues, then this section shows all the queues and activities.
    Data Transfer
    In this section the DMA transfers from the host to the device memory are traced. There are multiple DMA threads implemented in the OpenCL runtime and there is typically an equal number of DMA channels. The DMA transfer is initiated by the user application by calling OpenCL APIs such as clEnqueueMigrateMemObjects. These DMA requests are forwarded to the runtime which delegates to one of the threads. The data transfer from the host to the device appear under Write as they are written by the host, and the transfers from device to host appear under Read.
    Kernel Enqueues
    The kernels enqueued by the host program are shown here. The kernels here should not be confused with the kernels/CUs on the device. Here kernel refers to the NDRangeKernels and tasks created by the OpenCL commands clEnqueueNDRangeKernels and clEnqueueTask. These are plotted against the time measured from the host’s perspective. Multiple kernels can be scheduled to be executed at the same time, and they are traced from the point they are scheduled to run until the end of the kernel execution. This is the reason for multiple entries. The number of rows depend on the number of overlapping kernel executions.
    Note: Overlapping of the kernels should not be mistaken for actual parallel execution on the device as the process might not be ready to execute right away.
  • Device "name"
    Binary Container "name"
    Binary container name.
    Accelerator "name"
    Name of the compute unit (a.k.a., Accelerator) on the FPGA.
    User Functions
    In the case of the Vitis HLS tool kernels, functions that are implemented as data flow processes are traced here. The trace for these functions show the number of active instances of these functions that are currently executing in parallel. These names are generated in hardware emulation when waveform is enabled.
    Note: Function level activity is only possible in hardware emulation.
    • Function: "name a"
    • Function: "name b"
    Read
    A CU reads from the DDR over AXI-MM ports. The trace of a data read by a CU is shown here. The activity is shown as transaction and the tool-tip for each transaction shows more details of the AXI transaction. These names are generated when --profile.data is for the CU.
    Write
    A CU writes to the DDR over AXI-MM ports. The trace of data written by a CU is shown here. The activity is shown as transactions and the tool-tip for each transaction shows more details of the AXI transaction. This is generated when --profile.data is specified for the CU.