Building the AI Engine Component - Building the AI Engine Component - 2026.1 English - UG1702

After creating the AI Engine component, you can select the Component in the Flow Navigator to make it the active component in the tool. Then select the Build command under either the X86 Simulation flow or the AI Engine Simulator/Hardware flow.

An AI Engine component uses the new v++ --mode aie feature of the common command-line for compilation. See v++ Mode AI Engine. The component runs in either x86simulator or aiesimulator depending on the target of the compilation process. The component can also run on the actual hardware device.

The AI Engine compiler supports two build targets.

• The x86sim target compiles the code for use in the x86 functional simulator.
• The hw target compiles the code and produces a libadf.a for the aiesimulator, hardware emulation, or hardware.

The Vitis Unified IDE specifies a work directory (-work_dir) as a sub-directory of the AI Engine component. The directory is in the format of build/<target>/Work, for example --work_dir ./work_space/aie-component/build/hw/Work. You can find the output of the build process at build/<target> and build/<target>/Work. The type of output and contents of the output directory depend on the target you specify.

You can view a transcript of the build process in the Output console. The transcript has the name and the build target, for example aie1::x86sim. When the build completes, you can review the transcript or the AIECompiler.log file at <component>/build/<target>.

The Flow Navigator displays a green circle with a check mark in it, or a red circle with an x depending on the results of the build. If the build completes with errors, review the transcript or the log file to determine what might be the cause and rerun the build as needed.

After the build completes, you can view the microcode produced by the AI Engine compiler. Refer to Viewing AI Engine Microcode for details. This opens the LST (.lst) file. The file contains microcode corresponding to the kernel code that executes on a specific AI Engine tile.

You can access build reports by expanding Reports in the Flow Navigator. The available reports vary depending on the build target of x86sim or hw. You can select any of the available reports to view, or switch to the Analysis view to complete a review of the reports. For details about the available reports, see Working with the Analysis View (Vitis Analyzer).

After the build completes successfully you can choose to Run or Debug the component.