Programming Versal AI Engines

Vitis Unified Software Platform Documentation: Application Acceleration Development (UG1393)

Document ID
UG1393
Release Date
2023-07-17
Version
2023.1 English

As described in AI Engine Kernel and Graph Programming Guide (UG1079), an AI Engine kernel is a C/C++ program that is written using the AI Engine API and specialized intrinsic functions that target the VLIW scalar and vector processors of AMD Versal™ AI Core devices.

The AI Engine kernel code is compiled using the AI Engine compiler (aiecompiler) which is included in the AMD Vitis™ core development kit. The AI Engine compiler produces ELF files that are run on the AI Engine processors. Multiple AI Engine kernels are combined in an adaptive data flow (ADF) graph that consists of nodes and edges where nodes represent compute kernel functions, and edges represent data connections. The ADF graph is a static flow dataflow graph with kernels operating in parallel on data streams. The ADF graph interacts with the PL kernels of the Vitis flow, global memory, and the host application described here.

Refer to AI Engine Kernel and Graph Programming Guide (UG1079) and AI Engine Tools and Flows User Guide (UG1076) for more information on developing Versal AI Engine applications.