Ecosyste.ms: Awesome

An open API service indexing awesome lists of open source software.

Awesome Lists | Featured Topics | Projects

https://github.com/ucb-bar/chisel-gui

A prototype GUI for chisel-development
https://github.com/ucb-bar/chisel-gui

Last synced: 2 months ago
JSON representation

A prototype GUI for chisel-development

Awesome Lists containing this project

README 

        
# ChiselGUI

This is the alpha version of a waveform viewer that can be coupled to the

 [Treadle Firrtl Simulator](https://github.com/freechipsproject/treadle).

 

 Here is a sample screenshot



![chisel-gui-image](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ucb-bar/chisel-gui/master/doc/images/chisel-gui-image.png)



## Features



- Automatic saving of state, including selected fields position in a VCD

- Compress time scale to just ready valid (/RV) fire events or valid /V valid events

  - Just right click on a /RV or /V signal in selected signals panel

- Jump to Chisel source file from a signal

- Manual peek and poke top level IO ports and step the DUT

- Aggregate Ready/Valid and Valid IO bundles and show with color coded waveform state

- Construct arbitrary hierarchies in waveform viewer

- Automatically add driving signals to a user selected depth for a displayed signal 

- Show the driving logic for any symbol in the DUT



## Installing



At the shell problem use

```

cd $WORKDIR

git clone https://github.com/ucb-bar/chisel-gui

cd chisel-gui

sbt assembly

export PATH=$PATH:$WORKDIR/chisel-gui/utils/bin/

```



## Launching the Application

The simplest way to run is to have a related firrtl file and VCD file.

These can be generated by running unit tests of a DUT built in a project derived from

[chisel-template](https://github.com/freechipsproject/chisel-template).

See instruction for unit testers to generate VCD output.

This output along with the firrtl file (.fir suffix) are  typically placed under the directory

`test_run_dir`, for example 

```

test_run_dir/GCDTester/GCD.fir

test_run_dir/gcd.GCDTester/GCD.v

```

In your project dir, having installed *chisel-gui* as above, run 

```

chiselgui test_run_dir/gcd.GCDTester/GCD.fir --vcd test_run_dir/gcd.GCDTester/GCD.v --chisel-source-paths src/main

```

> For naming compatibility reasons, currently the VCD file you supply must be generated by

> the Treadle backend. We may be able to lift this restriction in the future.



For the full (and daunting) list of possible command line options run

```

chisel-gui --help

``` 

Most of those flags are not recommended for typical usage.



## How to Run

The application consists of 4 main panels.

- The Signal Selector Panel on far left

- The Selected Signal Panel comes next

- The WaveForm Panel comes after that. It and the Selected Signal Panel are linked together

- The InputControl Panel is on the far right.



> The Signal Selector Panel and the InputControl Panel can be hidden manually.

> Also the Input Control Panel will not be shown if a Firrtl file is not specified



### Signal Selector Panel

This is used to select signals for viewing in the wave form panel.

The panel allows limited filtering, `_T_` and `_GEN_` signal are filtered out

by default. There is a small text window that allows input of partial regular expressions.

When used only matching signal names will be shown.

At the bottom is a row of buttons that control where selected entries are placed in the selected signal panel.

All but the *append to end* button will *not* function if nothing is selected in the selected signal panel.



### Selected Panel

This is the signals that have been selected to have their waveforms viewed.

The items in this can be re-arranged through dragging and dropping, which includes

the building of arbitrary nested hierarchies.

Groups can be created and items can be deleted by selecting and using the delete keys.



Most items have a pop-menu that provides, depending on context, the following choices

- DataFormat allows setting display radix

- Add Driving signals will add a list of signals that drive the clicked item

- Show Driving logic will show a nested display of the dut logic cone driving the clicked item

- Jump to source will attempt to open the source file associated with the clicked item



Caveats

> Jump to Source is currently hard coded to try and open the Chisel *.scala* file in the

> IntelliJ idea in a OS-X environment. This operation should be command line configurable.

> Additionally a lot of the signals currently do not have references to their original source.

> This should be addressed in upcoming new versions of *Chisel3* and *Firrtl*

  

### Wave form panel

This is pretty straightforward display of signal waveforms.

An interesting feature is that *ChiselGUI* will attempt to aggregate (or roll-up) ready/valid and valid

IO bundles. The ready/valid and valid signals will be displayed in a color coded form indicating the

relative state of the flow control signals.



### The Input Control Panel

This panel allows the user to continue execution of the circuit.

This panel presents a list of the top level IO ports.

Values will be checked for format and legal range. 

Input Format allowed currently are

- 0xNNN or xNNN for hex

- bNNN for binary

- NNNN for decimal



where N is a digit appropriate for the radix.

A minus sign can be placed at the front of any of the above

if the input is an SInt.



Port values can be set then poked. Poking does not advance the clock, to do that you must

hit the `step` button.



Input fields can be populated from the input values under the cursor.

 

The input control panel

keeps a history of any time a set of values is successfully poked.

History will not add two entries adjacently that are the same, but non-adjacent duplicates

can occur. There is an arbitrary limit of 50 entries in the history at the moment



> All ports will be poked with the current visible values when the `poke` button is hit. A blank field

> will not be poked, but is not an error



## Ideas / To Do



- Searching for events in VCD

  - by one or more signals

  - at multiple times (with specified relationships between times)

- More VCD manipulation

  - Go back in time

- Input manipulation

  - force arbitrary signals to a value