ORCA-SIM

ORCA-SIM is a framework for generating simulation tools. Generated simulators rely on event-driven queues to organize and run hardware events, which could be either cycles (for a cycle-accurate simualtion) or instruction (for an instruction-accurate simulation).

Features

• No external library or runtime required
• Hardware is modeled using included C++ classes, no special syntax or language extension
• Runs in any unix-based system that runs GCC (tested in a variety of Ubuntu and Debian systems)
• Supports remote debugging with GDB via UDP
• Trade-off speed-accuracy can be worked out in hardware models, real-time simulation is achievable
• Peripheral access is supported via memory-mapped I/O

Requirements

• GNU's Make
• GNU's GCC, recommended the most recent stable version
• Cross-compilers and toolchains for the target platform (for Risc-V, see https://www.sifive.com/boards)

Included hardware models

• Processor model for emulating the HF-RiscV processor (supports both cycle- and instruction-accurate simulations)
• A 5-port router model for the Hermes network-on-chip
• Memory and FIFO buffers
• NoC-to-UDP virtual adapter

Included example platforms

• orca-mpsoc, a manycore platform based on HF-RiscV processor and Hermes network-on-chip (https://github.com/andersondomingues/orca-mpsoc)
• single-core, a platform based on the HF-RiscV processor (Risc-V ISA, RV32im, 32-bit, no cache support).

Software

• A set of application, operating system, and libraries to run on the example platforms is available at https://github.com/andersondomingues/orca-software-tools

Quick Start

1. Clone this repository. Use git clone https://github.com/andersondomingues/orca-sim
2. Edit Configuration.mk and select the desired platform by changin the ORCA_PLATFORM variable
3. Go to the root folder and type make in the terminal (requires GCC version >= 7.x and Make)
4. Run the generated tool as ./bin/single-core.exe <software-image>, where software-image is the binary compiled for the target architecture. Both examples use the HF-RiscV processor (see [Third Part Work]).

Project Organization

• /bin : compiled binaries and compilation artifacts
• /docs : tutorials and guidance resources
• /logs : output logs
• /models : hardware models (processor core, memory cores, etc.)
• /platforms : top-level platform models
• /ursa : simultion engine
• /gdbrsp: a standalone gdbserver implementation
• Makefile : compilation script for Make tool
• Configuration.mk : project-wide configuration

Project Status

• We have succefully simulated a fully-functional MPSoC platform comprising of a mesh-based NoC architecture interconnecting up to 16x16 processing elements (256 cores, table test).
• We have extended the framework to communicate with ROS, to run robotics application in the simulated platforms. See http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/LARS-SBR-WRE48964.2019.00043
• We added support for energy estimation via hardware characterization for the included models. Work to appear in ISCAS 2020.

Project Roadmap

Current work can be seen in Projects tab at the top of this page. An informal list of things that we are likely to work on in the next months is provided below.

• Automatically generate and export Doxygen documentation to a github of the project, programmatically.
• Provide hardware models as static libraries (enable model reuse for other projects)
• A website containing technical and non-technical information on the project.
• Benchmarks!
• Visualization tools (including, NoC, Task Schedule, memory and other inspections)
• Decent tutorials

Generating API Documentation

• Make sure you have installed doxygen and graphviz to your system.
• In the root directory, type make documentation. Documentation will be deployed to docs/doxygen folder.
• You can access docs by opening docs/doxygen/html/index.html in any web browser (e.g., firefox).
• LaTeX documentation can be generate by typeing make -C docs/doxygen/latex/. The output file docs/doxygen/latex/refman.pdf contains the generated documentation. Please note that tabu.sty may be buggy. In that case, replace the generated file by one provided in CTAN's page (https://ctan.org/pkg/tabu?lang=en).

Licensing

This is free software! See LICENSE.MD for details.

Contact

Feel free to contact me (andersondomingues), the maintainer of this project: mailto:ti.andersondomingues@gmail.com.

Third-Party Work and Acknowledgement

• HF-RISCV. The hf-riscv core is maintained by Sergio Johann (sjohann81). More information on his work can be found at his repository. I would like to thank Mr. Johann for the time spent explaining me the depths of the HF-RiscV architecture.

• HERMES. The GAPH group maintains the HERMES network-on-chip. More information on their work can be found at their website. Provided network-on-chip router model is based on the RTL models available at their repository. I would like to thank the GAPH group for giving me so many insights on Hermes' architecture.

• I would to thank Mr. Alexandre Amory (https://github.com/amamory) for the advising during the development of this work. I also thank for the fancy compilation scripts, they rock!