A reactor-runtime for doing HW/SW codesign in Lingua Franca

reactor-chisel is a hardware runtime enabling execution of reactors on FPGAs. This project is connected to a project extending the Lingua Franca Compiler (lfc) with a Chisel-target and a Codesign-target. This enables programming hardware and software for SoC FPGAs at the "same level of abstraction".

Prerequisits

• A Ubuntu 20.04 system.
• Java17 or above.
• verilator v4.222, on Ubuntu it can be installed with sudo apt install verilator.
• g++ v9.4,0 or higher.
• CMake version 3.20 or higher.
• gtkwave
• SBT see installation guide here: https://www.scala-sbt.org/download.html

Getting started

This repository is submoduled in our fork of the Lingua Franca compiler. To get started clone our fork and run the Chisel and Codesign tests.

git clone https://github.com/erlingrj/lingua-franca.git --branch chisel3 --recursive && cd lingua-franca # Clone repo and check out the right branch
./gradlew targetTest -Ptarget=Chisel # Run the set of Chisel-target integration tests
./gradlew targetTest -Ptarget=Codesign # Run the set of Codesign-target integration tests

This will build the compiler and run all the tests located in test/Chisel/src and test/Codesign/src. Please refer to these tests for programs demonstrating the features supported by the Chisel and Codesign target of Lingua Franca.

To build an lfc excutable issue: ./gradlew assemble. The resuling executable can be found in build/install/lf-cli. Either move lfc to a directory on the system PATH or add the install directory to to PATH.

From now we will assume that lfc is on your PATH.

Hello World standalone

Lingua Franca projects are typically structured with source files organized under a src directory and the compiler puts generated files under src-gen, and compiled executables under bin. See the LF Handbook for more information.

To create a simple standalone HelloWorld program to excute in hardware:

mkdir hello-reactors && cd hello-reactors
mkdir src && touch src/HelloWorld.lf

Copy the following simple program:

target Chisel;

main reactor {
  reaction(startup) {=
    printf("Hello from this HW reactor @ %d\n", lf_time_logical())
  =}
}

Then run lfc

lfc src/HelloWorld.lf

This will eventually produce an executable which you now can run:

bin/lfc --trace
> Tracing enabled
> Hello from this HW reactor @              0

For more information on reactors and Lingua Franca visit: www.lf-lang.org