During hardware emulation, kernel code is compiled into RTL code so that you can evaluate the RTL logic of kernels prior to implementation into the Xilinx device. The host code can be executed concurrently with a behavioral simulation of the RTL model of the kernel, directly imported, or created through Vitis HLS from the C/C++/OpenCL kernel code. For more information, see Hardware Emulation.
The following figure shows the hardware emulation flow diagram which can be used in the Vitis debugger to validate the host code, profile host and kernel performance, give estimated FPGA resource usage, and verify the kernel using an accurate model of the hardware (RTL). The RTL kernel code is analyzed in a Vivado simulator or third-party RTL simulator. GDB is used for more traditional software-style debugging of the host code.
Verify the host code and the kernel hardware implementation is correct by running hardware emulation on a data set. The hardware emulation flow invokes the Vivado logic simulator in the Vitis core development kit to test the kernel logic that is to be executed on the FPGA fabric. The interface between the models is represented by a transaction-level model (TLM) to limit impact of interface model on the overall execution time. The execution time for hardware emulation is longer than software emulation.
During hardware emulation, you can optionally modify the kernel code to improve performance. Iterate your host and kernel code design in hardware emulation until the functionality is correct, and the estimated kernel performance is satisfactory.