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FPGA Interchange Format

The Interchange Format (IF) is a common format for describing FPGA architecture that was developed by AntMicro, Google, and Xilinx/AMD. This format allows interoperability between open-source and proprietary FPGA tools. The IF format uses a set of schema to describe

  • Device Resources (*.device): Information about the FPGA architecture including site map and routing resources.
  • Logical Netlist (*.netlist): Represents the logic mapped synthesized netlist before placement and routing.
  • Physical Netlist (*.phys): Represents both placed and routed designs.

IF Support in DREAMPlaceFPGA

Note: DREAMPlaceFPGA supports Interchange Format for most Ultrascale and Ultrascale+ parts. The GNL designs used are available at: https://github.com/Xilinx/RapidWright/releases/download/v2022.2.1-beta/gnl_timing_designs.zip

The figure below shows the steps involved in running a GNL design on DREAMPlaceFPGA.

External Dependencies

  • CapnProto

    • Cap’n Proto C++ tools for interchange format
    • Tested on version 1.0.2

  • RapidWright

    • Generates *.device and *.netlist interchange files, convert interchange output to .*dcp

Interchange flow

I: Generate Interchange Format (IF) files

Generating the Interchange format *.netlist and *.device using Vivado and RapidWright

  • From Vivado, generate an *.edf for the design. The *.edf file can also be generated from a design check point (dcp). To generate *.edf file from Vivado, use the command write_edif design.edf

  • Use RapidWright to generate the Interchange Format *.netlist file from design.edf java com.xilinx.rapidwright.interchange.LogicalNetlistExample design.edf This command generates the design.netlist IF file.

Note: The *.device is a very large file and has not been included. Please use RapidWright to generate the Interchange Format *.device file from the part name java com.xilinx.rapidwright.interchange.DeviceResourcesExample xcvu3p-ffvc1517-2-e This command generates the xcvu3p-ffvc1517-2-e.device IF file.

(Optional) Generating design.pl bookshelf file for fixed IO instances in the design:

If the design contains IO instances, their fixed locations are provided using the design.pl bookshelf input file. Follow the below steps to generate the design.pl file from Vivado:

  • Run placement in Vivado for the design using the command: place_design

  • Use the TCL script to extract the design’s IO locations in Vivado using the command: source IFsupport/get_io_sites.tcl The IO placement information is written to io_placement.txt.

  • Generate the design.pl file using the io_placement.txt file obtained from Vivado, using: python IFsupport/create_fixed_io.py --io_place io_placement.txt

II: Run placement in DREAMPlaceFPGA

DREAMPlaceFPGA uses a *.json file to read in user-defined parameters.

The json files for the sample GNL designs in the benchmarks/IF_netlist folder are already provided in the test_interchange directory. For other designs, the user can create a similar json file.

IF related json parameters

The options that are relevant to Interchange Format (IF) in the JSON file are listed below:

JSON Parameter Default Description
interchange_netlist required for interchange input *.netlist file
interchange_device required for interchange input *.device file
enable_if 0 enable Interchange Format (IF) writer to generate *.phys for the placed design
enable_site_routing 0 enable Interchange Format (IF) writer to generate *.phys with intra-site routing
io_pl required for designs with IO bookshelf input *.pl with fixed IO locations

Run placement:

python dreamplacefpga/Placer.py test_interchange/gnl_2_4_3_1_xcvu3p.json The placement results can be found at results/

Run placement (Bash option):

bash bin/dreamplacefpga If the *.json file is not provided, this bash scripts automatically generates a *.json file and launch placement.

Usage : bin/dreamplacefpga -DREAMPlaceFPGA_dir <DREAMPlaceFPGA_dir> -result_dir <result_dir> -interchange_netlist <interchange_netlist> -interchange_device <interchange_device> -gpu <gpu_flag> -json <json_file> -python_exe <python_executable>

III: Use RapidWright to generate the design.dcp using the IF design.phys

In order to route the design in Vivado, the IF design.phys can be used to obtain a design check point or dcp. In RapidWright, use the following command to generate the dcp with placement solution:

java com.xilinx.rapidwright.interchange.PhysicalNetlistToDcp design.netlist design.phys constr.xdc design.dcp

The *.xdc file is used to provide constraints, such as timing and placement, to Vivado. We use an empty *.xdc file for the dcp generation.

For the GNL designs:

  • As the GNL designs do not have any IO instances, they result in critical warnings during routing in Vivado. To avoid these critical warnings, use java com.xilinx.rapidwright.interchange.PhysicalNetlistToDcp --out_of_context

IV: Running routing in Vivado

  • Read in the design to Vivado using open_checkpoint design.dcp

  • Route the design in Vivado using route_design

V: Common Issues

Segmentation fault when reading the *.device file, try

ulimit -s unlimited