meta-renesas-ai

This OpenEmbedded/Yocto layer collector adds AI tools support to Renesas RZ/G2 platforms.

For RZ/G2 family

The layers should be used with the official Renesas RZ/G2 Yocto Poky BSP based on the CIP Kernel:
URI: https://github.com/renesas-rz/meta-rzg2.git
tag: BSP-1.0.10-update1 (85d5f8cc554413fc19e4fff43cb0c027f55d0778)

For RZ/G2L family

The layers should be used with the official Renesas RZ/G2L Yocto Poky BSP:
URI: https://github.com/renesas-rz/meta-rzg2/tree/dunfell/rzg2l
tag: rzg2l_bsp_v1.3-update1 (de2774adf5a0852b03e8842aec794f2825ffc11b)

For each AI tool, please refer to meta-${AI_TOOL_NAME}/README.md. For example:
meta-tensorflow-lite/README.md

This project comes with template files to make it easier for the user to quickly integrate their specific application with the specific AI tool. Only specific platforms are supported, therefore template files are machine specific and can be found under:
meta-${AI_TOOL_NAME}/templates/${MACHINE}

Copying local.conf and bblayers.conf from the templates directory to your build conf directory is usually the first thing the user wants to do, but the configuration must be inspected and further customized according to the project requirements.

Before using the configuration files from the desired templates directory, please make sure you have read and understood the terms and conditions found in the Licensing section.

Supported Frameworks/Versions

Framework	Version	Parser(s)	Inference Hardware
ArmNN	v21.05	ONNX (v1.6.0) TensorFlow Lite (v2.3.1)	CPU GPU (smarc-rzg2l, smarc-rzg2lc)
ONNX Runtime	v1.8.0	ONNX	CPU
TensorFlow Lite	v2.5.0	TensorFlow Lite	CPU

Supported Embedded Platforms

SoC	Platform
Renesas RZ/G2H	HopeRun hihope-rzg2h
Renesas RZ/G2M	HopeRun hihope-rzg2m
Renesas RZ/G2N	HopeRun hihope-rzg2n
Renesas RZ/G2E	Silicon Linux ek874
Renesas RZ/G2L	Renesas smarc-rzg2l evk
Renesas RZ/G2LC	Renesas smarc-rzg2lc evk

Build Script

A simple build script has been created to manage the build process.
Before running the script you will need to download the relevant proprietary libraries from the Renesas website. See the Renesas RZ/G2 BSP readme file for details on how to do this.

Run ./scripts/build-rzg-ai-bsp.sh -h to get an overview on how to use the script.

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Notes

Proxies
If working behind a proxy, make sure the environment of the shell you are running bitbake from contains HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY environment variables, set according to your proxy configuration.

Using Large Models
Due to the limited memory size on some platforms, large pre-trained models could cause out of memory issues. To overcome this memory limitation, a swap file can used.
To include swap support add the following to local.conf:

IMAGE_INSTALL_append = " mkswap"

By default, this will create and enable a 2048 MB swapfile.

If needed, the size of the swap file can be set (in MB) in local.conf:

SWAP_SIZE = "512"

meta-rzg2 patches for RZ/G2 BSP
The unauthenticated git protocol is no longer supported by Github.
Applying patches/meta-rzg2/rocko-rzg2/0001-multimedia-gstreamer-Use-https.patch will change the protocol used during cloning to https, allowing compilation.

cd meta-rzg2
git am ../meta-renesas-ai/patches/meta-rzg2/rocko-rzg2/0001-multimedia-gstreamer-Use-https.patch

meta-rzg2 patches for RZ/G2L BSP
There is a bug when trying to build the SDK for core-image-qt images.

This is fixed by applying patches/meta-rzg2/dunfell-rzg2l/0001-Enable-RZ-G2L-Qt-SDK-builds.patch.

cd meta-rzg2
git am ../meta-renesas-ai/patches/meta-rzg2/dunfell-rzg2l/0001-Enable-RZ-G2L-Qt-SDK-builds.patch

This only needs to be done when building for the smarc-rzg2l and smarc-rzg2lc platforms.

The unauthenticated git protocol is no longer supported by Github.
Applying patches/meta-rzg2/rocko-rzg2/0001-multimedia-gstreamer-Use-https.patch will change the protocol used during cloning to https, allowing compilation.

cd meta-rzg2
git am ../meta-renesas-ai/patches/meta-rzg2/dunfell-rzg2l/0001-multimedia-gstreamer-Use-https.patch

LICENSING

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license (please see file COPYING.MIT in this directory for further details).

The configuration files found under:

meta-*/templates/*/local.conf

This is needed to add full video encoding/decoding support to the BSP.
For example for the RZ/G2L:

LICENSE_FLAGS_WHITELIST = "commercial_gstreamer1.0-libav commercial_gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly commercial_ffmpeg commercial_mpeg2dec commercial_faac commercial_faad2 commercial_x264"

By editing these commented lines in the template files coming from this repository, the user agrees to the terms and conditions from the licenses of the packages that are installed into the final image and that are covered by a commercial license.

The user also acknowledges that it's their responsibility to make sure they hold the right to use code protected by commercial agreements, whether the commercially protected packages are selected by Renesas' BSPs or by them.

Finally, the user acknowledges that it's their responsibility to make sure they hold the right to copy, use, modify, and re-distribute the intellectual property offered by this collection of meta-layers.

Note: Without uncommenting the LICENSE_FLAGS_WHITELIST lines the BSP build will fail.

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Send pull requests, patches, comments or questions to:
[email protected].

Maintainer:
Chris Paterson [email protected].