Just in time for our tutorial at the first Chisel Community Conference, we’ve released a new version of FireSim that adds lots of new features! The headlining features with this release are new debugging tools, including assertion synthesis and Rocket Chip/BOOM commit log tracing. We’ve also bumped to more recent versions of Rocket Chip/BOOM, updated the block device model to be deterministic, started preparing infrastructure necessary to merge FireSim’s “supernode” mode to master, and done lots of other internal cleanup. See the full changelog on GitHub.
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FireSim 1.17.0 Released with Support for Xilinx VCU118, U250, U280, and RHS Research Nitefury II On-Premises FPGAs
Posted by Sagar Karandikar
We just released FireSim 1.17.0, which adds support for several new on-premises FPGA boards, including:
- Xilinx VCU118: FireSim VCU118 XDMA-based Getting Started Guide
- RHS Research Nitefury II: FireSim Nitefury II XDMA-based Getting Started Guide
- Xilinx Alveo U250: FireSim U250 XDMA-based Getting Started Guide
- Xilinx Alveo U280: FireSim U280 XDMA-based Getting Started Guide
All of these platforms support all FireSim features, including advanced debugging features like TracerV, Printf Synthesis, and more. FireSim’s automation is also maintained, enabling the ability to build large local clusters of FPGAs and automatically deploy simulations to them. The getting started guides for each FPGA (linked above) explain how to set up host systems of various scales, including:
- A portable FireSim-host consisting of a laptop with a Thunderbolt-attached Nitefury II FPGA (e.g., FireStarter laptop on slide 32 here)
- A desktop-based FireSim-host with one or a handful of FPGAs (e.g., FireStation desktop on slide 28 here)
- A large on-premises FireSim-host cluster with many machines and many FPGAs
All of the platforms listed above are supported using XDMA-based shells. If you were previously using FireSim’s Vitis-based U250 support, we highly recommend migrating to the new XDMA-based U250 flow.
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FireSim Selected for ISCA@50 25-year Retrospective 1996-2020
Posted by Sagar Karandikar
FireSim was selected for the “ISCA@50 25-year Retrospective 1996-2020” and the retrospectives are now published! You can find our retrospective paper here.