November 30, 2020

Simulating Embedded Hardware with Michael Gielda

1 hour 29 minutes

Welcome Michael Gielda of Antmicro and the CHIPS Alliance!

We were introduced to Michael by past guest Tim Ansell

Antmicro was a founding member of RISC V, which they first found out about at a workshop at CERN

Open RISC

Renode is "a simulator to build embedded systems faster"

Antmicro is a service organization at their core (contract/consulting services)

They built Renode for themselves

Edge AI systems

CI - Continuous Integration

Can simulate internal and external peripherals for a chip and board

Abstracting building blocks

Renode allows users to put things together in a config file

They have been described as "The Docker of embedded", which Michael says isn't quite true, but shows that Antmicro works within the concept of Containerization

Using Chris's ABC board as an example

We had previously talked about a remote testing setup on episode 512, and how Renode would replace that setup

Users load their compiled binary into Renode.

What can you "see" inside Renode?

Packet analyzer like Wireshark

There wasn't a way to produce trace data, so they built something that extracts it from the simulated processor

The Renode 1.11 release has metrics analysis

Trace tracking

Modeling an accelerometer

Renode Platform File

Everything becomes a test vector

TFlite - Tensor Flow Lite

esting gesture recognition

Pareto

Removing the human factor from the loop

Test driven development

Antmicro is "trying to make hardware boring"

Networking is tough. What if you want to work with a bunch of devices networked together? Renode allows you to simulate multiple high level devices (like a dev board) talking to one another over a simulated network.

Testing packet loss

How do you validate that the simulation represents reality?

Base the simulation data on datasheet

Most systems are only using 10% of the chip (system), in terms of all

Currently integrated into arduino

HDL simulation (transistor level) using Verilator

SiFive - FireSim

Closing the feedback loop

Silicon vendors didn't give what the software people want

Security domain - Dover use case. People prototyping performance.

Polarfire SOC

LiteX

Working with Quick Logic

PDK shuttle runs closing

Open Fabric

How do they decide on what to work on? "We look for things that are really broken and try to fix them"

Working out in the open on CI for TF Lite

"A society of tinkerers"

CHIPS alliance aims to promote open source cores, interconect, and more...but also open source tooling

It is a Linux Foundation project

Intel AIB - developed the spec and code at the same time

Would open source be possible in a place with vertical integration (ie Tesla), as we talked with Joris last week? "Open source achieves a common interface without the scale of Tesla"

For more informtion, check out Antmicro.com

Renode portable package

Check out documentation

One command to run the demo

Looking for marketing people, but more broadly they are looking for people that believe in the mission of open source

Not discussed on the episode:

Michael gave a talk/demo at FOSSi foundation

Many thanks to our Patrons! You can join at Patreon.com/TheAmpHour if you’d like to join the crowd. A special thanks to our corporate sponsor Binho, who now distribute the Sensepeek PCBite.

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By The Amp Hour (Chris Gammell and David L Jones)

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