AI Engine Simulation-Based Value Change Dump - 2023.1 English

AI Engine Tools and Flows User Guide (UG1076)

Document ID
UG1076
Release Date
2023-06-23
Version
2023.1 English

In the simulation framework, the AI Engine simulator can generate a detailed dump of the hardware signals in the form of value change dump (VCD) files. A defined set of abstract events describes the execution of a multi-kernel AI Engine program in terms of these events. The output of a VCD file is enabled using the aiesimulator --dump-vcd command.

After simulation, or emulation, the VCD file can be processed into events and viewed on a timeline in the AMD Vitis™ Analyzer tool. The events contain information such as time stamps, different event types, and data associated with each event. This information can be correlated to the compiler generated debug information. This includes program counter values mapped to function names and instruction offsets, and source level symbolic data offsets for memory accesses.

The abstract AI Engine events are independent of the VCD format and will be directly extracted from the hardware. The events traces can be produced as plain text, comma-separated values (CSV), common trace format (CTF), or in waveform database (WDB), and the generated event trace data can be viewed in the Vitis Analyzer.