Yosys offers no stability guarantees for individual `proc_*` passes,
though so far it worked out fine. This commit changes the Verilog
backend to use `proc -nomux` instead, which is guaranteed to have
backwards-compatible behavior.
Fixes#479.
Before this commit, each simulation engine (which is only pysim at
the moment, but also cxxsim soon) was a subclass of SimulatorCore,
and every simulation engine module would essentially duplicate
the complete structure of a simulator, with code partially shared.
This was a really bad idea: it was inconvenient to use, with
downstream code having to branch between e.g. PySettle and CxxSettle;
it had no well-defined external interface; it had multiple virtually
identical entry points; and it had no separation between simulation
algorithms and glue code.
This commit completely rearranges simulation code.
1. sim._base defines internal simulation interfaces. The clarity of
these internal interfaces is important because simulation
engines mix and match components to provide a consistent API
regardless of the chosen engine.
2. sim.core defines the external simulation interface: the commands
and the simulator facade. The facade provides a single entry
point and, when possible, validates or lowers user input.
It also imports built-in simulation engines by their symbolic
name, avoiding eager imports of pyvcd or ctypes.
3. sim.xxxsim (currently, only sim.pysim) defines the simulator
implementation: time and state management, process scheduling,
and waveform dumping.
The new simulator structure has none of the downsides of the old one.
See #324.
The overhead of coroutine processes is fairly high. A clock driver
implemented through a coroutine process is mostly overhead. This was
partially addressed in commit 2398b792 by microoptimizing yielding.
This commit eliminates the coroutine process overhead completely by
introducing dedicated clock processes. It also simplifies the logic
to a simple toggle.
This change improves runtime by about 12% on Minerva SRAM SoC.
Compared to tests in the repository root, tests in the package have
many downsides:
* Unless explicitly excluded in find_packages(), tests and their
support code effectively become a part of public API.
This, unfortunately, happened with FHDLTestCase, which was never
intended for downstream use.
* Even if explicitly excluded from the setuptools package, using
an editable install, or setting PYTHONPATH still allows accessing
the tests.
* Having a sub-package that is present in the source tree but not
exported (or, worse, exported only sometimes) is confusing.
* The name `nmigen.test` cannot be used for anything else, such as
testing utilities that *are* intended for downstream use.
In commit 9faa1d37, the RTLIL backend was changed to ignore modules
without ports completely, since Yosys would recognize empty modules
as black boxes without explicit `write_verilog -noblackbox` and break
the design. That change had many flaws:
* It removed instances without ports, which are used in e.g. SoC
FPGAs to instantiate a dummy CPU.
* It removed fragments without ports, which can appear in e.g. SoC
FPGAs in case the fabric is not connected to any I/O ports.
* Finally, it was just conceptually unjustified.
This commit changes the logic to actually check for empty fragments,
and instead of removing them, it adds a dummy wire inside. It would
be possible to use the Yosys-specific (*noblackbox*) attribute.
However, it would be necessary to strip it for most targets right
away, and also the wire doubles as documentation.
Fixes#441.
Verilog has an edge case where an `always @*` process, which is used
to describe a combinatorial function procedurally, may not execute
at time zero because none of the signals in its implicit sensitivity
list change, i.e. when the process doesn't read any signals. This
causes the wires driven by the process to stay undefined.
The workaround to this problem (assuming SystemVerilog `always_comb`
is not available) is to introduce a dummy signal that changes only
at time zero and is optimized out during synthesis. nMigen has had
its own workaround, `$verilog_initial_trigger`, for a while. However,
`proc_prune`, while increasing readability, pulls references to this
signal out of the process. Because of this, a similar workaround was
implemented in Yosys' `write_verilog` itself.
This commit ensures we use our workaround on versions of Yosys
without the updated `write_verilog`, and Yosys' workaround on later
versions.
Fixes#418.
When a literal is used on the left-hand side of a numeric operator,
Python is able to constant-fold some expressions:
>>> dis.dis(lambda x: 0 + 0 + x)
1 0 LOAD_CONST 1 (0)
2 LOAD_FAST 0 (x)
4 BINARY_ADD
6 RETURN_VALUE
If a literal is used on the right-hand side such that the left-hand
side is variable, this doesn't happen:
>>> dis.dis(lambda x: x + 0 + 0)
1 0 LOAD_FAST 0 (x)
2 LOAD_CONST 1 (0)
4 BINARY_ADD
6 LOAD_CONST 1 (0)
8 BINARY_ADD
10 RETURN_VALUE
PyRTL generates fairly redundant code due to the pervasive masking,
and because of that, transforming expressions into the former form,
where possible, improves runtime by about 10% on Minerva SRAM SoC.
Before this commit, ArrayProxy would add sign padding (an extra bit)
a homogeneous array of signed values, or an array where all unsigned
values are smaller than the largest signed one. After this commit,
ArrayProxy would only add padding in arrays with mixed signedness
where all signed values are smaller or equal in size to the largest
unsigned value.
Fixes#476.
Co-authored-by: Pepijn de Vos <pepijndevos@gmail.com>
When a port component is skipped, it should appear neither in the RTL
nor in the constraint file. However, passing around components of
differential ports explicitly makes that harder.
Fixes#456.
Supersedes #457.
Co-authored-by: Jean THOMAS <git0@pub.jeanthomas.me>
The parameter defaults to "ULTRASCALE", even when synthesizing for
7-series devices. This could lead to a simulation/synthesis mismatch,
and causes a warning.
Fixes#438.
This was added in commit bfd4538d based on a misunderstanding of how
Xilinx part numbers work.
* non-ultrascale 7-series parts don't have temperature grades;
* ultrascale parts have temperature grade as a part of speed grade.
