Implementing outlining has greatly increased the amount of debug
information in a typical build, and consequently exposed performance
issues in C++ compilers, which are similar for both GCC and Clang;
the compile time of Minerva SoC SRAM increased almost twofold.
Although one would expect the slowdown to be caused by the increased
use of templates in `debug_eval()`, it is actually almost entirely
attributable to optimizations and codegen for `debug_items()`.
Fortunately, it is neither possible nor desirable to optimize
`debug_items()`: in most cases it is called exactly once, and its
body is a linear sequence of calls with unique arguments.
This commit turns off optimizations for `debug_items()` on GCC and
Clang, improving -Os compile time of Minerva SoC SRAM by ~40% (!)
Aggressive wire localization and inlining is necessary for CXXRTL to
achieve high performance. However, that comes with a cost: reduced
debug information coverage. Previously, as a workaround, the `-Og`
option could have been used to guarantee complete coverage, at a cost
of a significant performance penalty.
This commit introduces debug information outlining. The main eval()
function is compiled with the user-specified optimization settings.
In tandem, an auxiliary debug_eval() function, compiled from the same
netlist, can be used to reconstruct the values of localized/inlined
signals on demand. To the extent that it is possible, debug_eval()
reuses the results of computations performed by eval(), only filling
in the missing values.
Benchmarking a representative design (Minerva SoC SRAM) shows that:
* Switching from `-O4`/`-Og` to `-O6` reduces runtime by ~40%.
* Switching from `-g1` to `-g2`, both used with `-O6`, increases
compile time by ~25%.
* Although `-g2` increases the resident size of generated modules,
this has no effect on runtime.
Because the impact of `-g2` is minimal and the benefits of having
unconditional 100% debug information coverage (and the performance
improvement as well) are major, this commit removes `-Og` and changes
the defaults to `-O6 -g2`.
We'll have our cake and eat it too!
Before this commit, a cell's input was always assigned like:
p_cell.p_input = (value...);
If `p_input` is buffered (e.g. if the design is built at -O0), this
is not correct. (In practice, this breaks clocking.) Unfortunately,
the incorrect design was compiled without diagnostics because wire<>
was move-assignable and also implicitly constructible from value<>.
After this commit, cell inputs are no longer incorrectly assumed to
always be unbuffered, and wires are not assignable from values.
RTL contract violations and C++ contract violations are different:
the former depend on the netlist and will never violate memory safety
whereas the latter may. When loading a CXXRTL simulation into another
process, RTL contract violations should generally not crash it, while
C++ contract violations should.
Although it is always possible to destroy and recreate the design to
simulate a power-on reset, this has two drawbacks:
* Black boxes are also destroyed and recreated, which causes them
to reacquire their resources, which might be costly and/or erase
important state.
* Pointers into the design are invalidated and have to be acquired
again, which is costly and might be very inconvenient if they are
captured elsewhere (especially through the C API).
This can be useful to determine whether the wire should be a part of
a design checkpoint, whether it can be used to override design state,
and whether driving it may cause a conflict.
This can be useful to distinguish e.g. a combinatorially driven wire
with type `CXXRTL_VALUE` from a module input with the same type, as
well as general introspection.
For several reasons:
* They're more convenient than accessing .data.
* They accommodate variably-sized types like size_t transparently.
* They statically ensure that no out of range conversions happen.
For now these are only provided for unsigned integers, but eventually
they should be provided for signed integers too. (Annoyingly this
affects conversions to/from `char` at the moment.)
Fixes#2127.
This can result in massive reduction in runtime, up to 50% depending
on workload. Currently people are using `-mllvm -inline-threshold=`
as a workaround (with clang++), but this solution is more portable.
This was a correctness issue, but one of the consequences is that it
resulted in jumps in generated machine code where there should have
been none. As a side effect of fixing the bug, Minerva SoC became 10%
faster.
With this change, it is easier to see which signals carry state (only
wire<>s appear as `reg` in VCD files) and to construct a minimal
checkpoint (CXXRTL_WIRE debug items represent the canonical smallest
set of state required to fully reconstruct the simulation).
Before this commit, Verilog expressions like `x && 1` would result in
references to `logic_and_us` in generated CXXRTL code, which would
not compile. After this commit, since cells like that actually behave
the same regardless of signedness attributes, the signedness is
ignored, which also reduces the template instantiation pressure.
Constant wires can represent a significant chunk of the design in
generic designs or after optimization. Emitting them in VCD files
significantly improves usability because gtkwave removes all traces
that are not present in the VCD file after reload, and iterative
development suffers if switching a varying signal to a constant
disrupts the workflow.
Compared to the C++ API, the C API currently has two limitations:
1. Memories cannot be updated in a race-free way.
2. Black boxes cannot be implemented in C.
Debug information describes values, wires, and memories with a simple
C-compatible layout. It can be emitted on demand into a map, which
has no runtime cost when it is unused, and allows late bound designs.
The `hdlname` attribute is used as the lookup key such that original
names, as emitted by the frontend, can be used for debugging and
introspection.
Strategically inserting the pending memory write in memory::update to keep the
queue sorted allows us to skip the queue sort in memory::commit.
The Minerva SRAM SoC runs ~7% faster as a result.
If it is statically known that eval() will converge in one delta
cycle (that is, the second commit() will always return `false`)
because the design contains no feedback or buffered wires, then
there is no need to run the second delta cycle at all.
After this commit, the case where eval() always converges immediately
is detected and the second delta cycle is omitted. As a result,
Minerva SRAM SoC runs ~25% faster.
Both parameters and attributes are necessary because the parameters
have to be the same between every instantiation of the cell, but
attributes may well vary. For example, for an UART PHY, the type
of the PHY (tty, pty, socket) would be a parameter, but configuration
of the implementation specified by the type (socket address) would
be an attribute.
This commit adds support for replacing RTLIL modules with CXXRTL
black boxes. Black box port widths may not depend on the parameters
with which it is instantiated (yet); the parameters may only be used
to change the behavior of the black box.
There is no practical benefit from using `const memory` for ROMs;
it uses an std::vector internally, which prevents contemporary
compilers from constant-propagating ROM contents. (It is not clear
whether they are permitted to do so.)
However, there is a major benefit from using non-const `memory` for
ROMs, which is the ability to dynamically fill the ROM for each
individual simulation.
This commit reduces space and time overhead for writable memories
to O(write port count) in both cases; implements handling for write
port priorities; and simplifies runtime representation of memories.
After this commit, if NDEBUG is not defined, out-of-bounds accesses
cause assertion failures for reads and writes. If NDEBUG is defined,
out-of-bounds reads return zeroes, and out-of-bounds writes are
ignored.
This commit also adds support for memories that start with a non-zero
index (`Memory::start_offset` in RTLIL).
This results in further massive gains in performance, modest decrease
in compile time, and, for designs without feedback arcs, makes it
possible to run eval() once per clock edge in certain conditions.
whitequark
Andy Knowles
MerryMage
Mike Walters
Asu