In the AMD Vitis™ environment the software application component can be written in native C++ using the Xilinx Runtime (XRT) native API. The XRT native API is described here in brief, with additional details available under XRT Native API on the XRT documentation site. The Application component is generally referred to as the host application for Data Center acceleration as it runs on an x86 server, and simply as the application for embedded processor-based systems in the same device as the PL kernel and the AI Engine graph.
In general, the structure of the host application can be divided into the following steps:
- Specifying the platform device ID and loading the .xclbin
- Setting up the PL kernel and kernel arguments
- Transferring data between the software application and PL kernels
- Loading and launching the AI Engine graph application
- Running the system and returning results
For AMD Versal™ adaptive SoC devices, the PS application manages the whole heterogeneous system, including the PL hardware and the AI Engine graph application. Refer to Programming the PS Host Application in the AI Engine Tools and Flows User Guide (UG1076) for more information.
xrt_coreutil
library. For example:
g++ -g -std=c++17 -I$XILINX_XRT/include -L$XILINX_XRT/lib -lxrt_coreutil -pthread
Compiling host code with XRT native C++ API requires C++ standard with -std=c++17
. On GCC version older than 4.9.0, use -std=c++1y
instead because -std=c++17
is introduced to GCC from 4.9.0.
fork()
system call. The fork()
does not duplicate all the
runtime threads. Hence, the child process cannot run as a complete application in the
Vitis core development kit. It is advisable to
use the posix_spawn()
system call to launch another
process from the Vitis software platform
application.