Tutorials and Technical Working Group Meetings

Get updated and up to speed on RISC-V before the core Summit!

Tutorials

Description of the tutorials
(Tutorials rooms and schedule TBD)

The potential of custom instructions, from design to implementation, accelerating the co-design flow

By Julián Pavón and Iván Vargas

Our objective is to enhance the efficiency of designing and evaluating new instructions within the RISC-V ISA, thereby reducing the entry barriers for researchers seeking to apply RISC-V to their respective domain-specific challenges. We will provide a comprehensive explanation about our top-to-bottom evaluation framework, which enables quick design and evaluation of new RISC-V instructions going through software stack integration to performance simulation.

The instructional program will comprise a blend of informative lectures and interactive lab sessions. Initially, participants will receive a comprehensive overview of diverse tools essential for both software and hardware development tailored to platforms supporting the RISC-V ISA. Subsequently, we will delve into the specifics of our evaluation framework, elucidating the utilization of one ISA emulator (QEMU) alongside a computer architecture simulator (gem5).

Furthermore, we will elucidate the integration methodology of these tools to expedite software development of new instructions via ISA emulators and to assess the performance of the developed instructions using computer architecture simulators. To facilitate hands-on learning, we will furnish our evaluation framework through a docker image, encompassing the aforementioned tools, along with requisite wrappers and scripts for seamless integration.

Additionally, practical exercises and example code will be provided during the lab sessions, enabling attendees to gain firsthand experience in the design, integration, and evaluation of new RISC-V instructions using our framework. Ultimately, all participants will depart equipped with the evaluation framework, code samples, and the necessary proficiency to employ them as foundational elements in their individual research endeavor.

Audience: The tutorial is tailored for a diverse audience, encompassing computer architecture researchers with a keen interest in integrating the RISC-V ISA into their research endeavors, and who seek a proficient tool to commence their work within this ISA domain. Moreover, it caters to researchers already immersed in RISC-V, aiming to augment their design methodology with a comprehensive top-to-bottom evaluation framework. Hardware developers exploring avenues for expedited performance assessment of new RISC-V instructions, prior to embarking on hardware modules in RTL, will find substantial value in this tutorial. Additionally, graduate and undergraduate students with a passion for computer systems and embedded systems are well-positioned to benefit from this tutorial, as it provides hands-on coding experiences facilitating the modeling and evaluation of diverse CPU architectures.

Requirements: Have Docker software installed on the laptop used during the tutorial and download our docker image with all the tools and libraries dependencies. All the information can be found in the following page: https://sites.google.com/view/tutorial-custom-riscv-instr/home

Julián Pavón (BSC, UPC) currently a final-year Ph.D. candidate at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya advised by Dr. Adrian Cristal and Dr. Osman Unsal. His research interests are centered around Computer Architecture, Vector Architectures, and RTL design. Julian’s primary focus involves the design of innovative Vector Processing Units capable of accelerating applications with irregular memory access patterns across various domains, including sparse algebra, databases, and genome sequence analysis. His contributions have been published in different top-tier venues. Julian has worked designing and developing different hardware modules for multiple RISC-V cores manufactured.

Iván Vargas Valdivieso (BSC, UPC) is a Ph.D. candidate at the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya advised by Dr. Adrian Cristal and Dr. Osman Unsal. His research interests are in computer architecture, Process-in-memory, Vector Architectures, Database Management Systems and hardware simulators. His research focuses on acceleration of DBMS through novel hardware-software codesign. Ivan is interested in hardware innovations in the areas of vector computing, database management systems and computer architecture simulators. His research focuses on acceleration of DBMS through novel hardware-software codesign.

RISC-V on FPGA in 90 minutes

By Dr Per Anderson

You will see and experience how to replicate the design of a simple RISC-V processor from scratch to executing programs on an FPGA-board within the timeframe of this 90-minute tutorial. The take-aways include how RISC-V can be used to raise educational goals and accomplishments, as well as the incredible, combined power and simplicity of open-source tools applied to open architecture specifications.

Audience: The tutorial is directed to anyone interested in how RISC-V, combined with the power and simplicity of present generation open-source tools, can be integrated with ease and thereby inspire and encourage the next, and perhaps present, generation of engineers to implement RISC-V in their designs.

Requirements: Laptops with USB and access to the Internet. FPGA boards will be provided by lecturers. One point of the tutorial is to demonstrate the ease of use emerging from delivering the tools into, and executing them inside, the user’s web browser without installation or downloads. Thus, the tutorial can be followed in full using no other pre-requisites than a (reasonably modern) web browser running on a laptop.

Dr Per Anderson (Lund Univ.). His main interests are in design of digital IC:s. He has a background as researcher, lecturer and entrepreneur and is now responsible for, and currently developing, the Batchelor level courses in digital design and computer organization at Lund University. This includes using open-source tools to implement a RISC-V design on FPGA during the laboratory work of the introductory course in digital design given in the sophomore year on the EE and CE programs. The development and dissemination of these activities were made possible by the EU project CHIPS of Europe and the Swedish Chips Competence center, SCCC.

SC-V MMU Verification of Virtualization and Hypervisor Operation for CPU and SOC Platform

By Adnan Hamid

The advent of RISC-V has presented verification teams with many new verification challenges. Complex interactions at the system level, that must be considered when developing a RISC-V core, include uncommon scenarios for block level verification teams. As we move towards more system-level verification and RISC-V Application Processors in general, these types of scenarios will become commonplace. As such, RISC-V verification provides, among many other things, an interesting learning vehicle for general verification challenges to come. This workshop will discuss a specific complex, but yet commonplace, verification challenge for any team working on a complex RISC-V core. We will consider the verification of a Memory Management Unit (MMU) that includes virtualization and hypervisor operation. These scenarios need to consider both Single- and Multi-core devices along with an Input Output Memory Management Unit (IOMMU) and uncore IP interaction. The workshop will contain valuable information for any engineer or manager involved with the design of a RISC-V core or using a RISC-V core on their SoC.

Audience: is any engineer involved with the design or verification of a RISC-V core, or any end user of a core on an SoC.

Requirements: None. The tutorial will consist of presentations and demos, and will not be hands on.

Adnan Hamid is the founder and CTO of Breker and the inventor of its core technology. Noted as the father of Portable Stimulus, he has over 20 years of experience in functional verification automation, much of it spent working in this domain. Prior to Breker, he managed AMD’s System Logic Division, and also led their verification team to create the first test case generator providing 100% coverage for an x86-class microprocessor. In addition, Adnan spent several years at Cadence Design Systems and served as the subject matter expert in system-level verification, developing solutions for Texas Instruments, Siemens/Infineon, Motorola/Freescale, and General Motors. Adnan holds twelve patents in test case generation and synthesis. He received BS degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University, and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin.