Using printf for Event Tracing - 2023.2 English - UG1393

The simplest form of tracing is to use a formatted printf() statement in the code for printing debug messages. Visual inspection of intermediate values, addresses, etc. can help you understand the progress of program execution. No additional include files are necessary for using printf() other than standard C/C++ includes (stdio.h). You can add printf() statements to your code to be processed during simulation, or hardware emulation, and remove them or comment them out for hardware builds.

Adding printf statements to your AI Engine kernel code will increase the compiled size of the AI Engine program. Be careful that the compiled size of your kernel code does not exceed the per-AI Engine processor memory limit of 16 KB.

A separate driver and binary is used for this functionality to allow the main simulator to remain as fast as possible. Using the debug simulator driver produces a per-tile profile report under the output directory which gives detailed cycle-level statistics of kernel execution. In addition, using the --profile option generates a run_summary file that is written to the ./aiesimulator_output folder that can be viewed as described in AI Engine Tools and Flows User Guide (UG1076).