Creating an AI Engine Component - Creating an AI Engine Component - 2026.1 English - UG1702

1. After opening the Vitis Unified IDE, click File > New Component > AI Engine.
   Tip: You can also click the New Component command from the Welcome page, or from the right-click menu in the Explorer view.
   
   
   
   Tip: You can change the color theme of the Vitis Unified IDE using the File > Preferences > Color Theme menu command.
2. Enter a Component name and Component location and click Next. This opens the Add Sources page of the wizard as shown below.
   
   
3. Click Import Sources to import by file or by folder. Adding a folder includes all of the current files in the folder and the sub-directories of the folder.
   Tip: You can also skip this step for now, and add the source files after creating the AI Engine component. Use the Import command on the component Sources folder in the Component Explorer view. Refer to Importing Files.
4. Click the top-level file from the files you added to the component. The top-level file defines the graph application for the AI Engine component. Refer to Introduction to Graph Programming in the AI Engine Kernel and Graph Programming Guide (UG1079). The Vitis Unified IDE automatically identifies the top-level file containing the main() function of the graph application.
5. Click Next. Click Part, Platform, or XSA.
6. Click Next to display the Summary page of the wizard. The Summary page reflects the choices you made on the prior pages.
7. Review the summary and click Finish to create the component.

You can find the new component in the Component Explorer view on the left of the screen. The vitis-comp.json file is in the central editor window to the right.

Figure 1. AI Engine Component - vitis-comp.json

The vitis-comp.json stores the component configuration. The file contains the component name and the platform or part that the component builds against. The file also contains the location, compiler settings, top-level file, and config file that define the AI Engine component.

• Compiler Settings provides access to the CMakeLists.txt file. You configure the compilation process with this file.
• Top-level file provides access to the source code which controls the graph.
• Config File provides access to the configuration file that defines options for the compilation process used by the v++ --mode aie command to build the AI Engine component. When you create the component, the configuration file contains the default values for many of the options. The next section describes the config file in greater detail.