Sweeping Large Design Spaces

Being embedded in a high-level language like Python allows mflowgen to generate highly parameterized graphs to explore large design spaces in a single graph. For example, we could sweep the design clock period to quickly see where timing fails, or we could sweep the cross product of a design space including combinational operators (e.g., add, mul, floating ops), different bitwidths, different precision formats, and different input datasets both for testing and for energy and timing estimation.

As a simple example, suppose we would like to sweep the clock_period parameter in the open-yosys-synthesis step in this graph:

_images/example-params-1.jpg

The mflowgen Python API Graph.param_space expands the node for each parameter value in the list:

g = Graph()
(... add steps and connect them together ... )
g.param_space( 'open-yosys-synthesis', 'clock_period', [ 0.5, 1.0, 1.5 ] )

The expansion propagates to all downstream nodes, resulting in three slightly different builds:

_images/example-params-2.jpg

This essentially “unrolls the loop” within a single graph, allowing you to more easily define and explore a parameter space, while avoiding manually creating these spaces on your own. The three builds can be run in parallel as usual (e.g., with “make -j” on different nodes), and all file management is handled cleanly by the build system according to your expanded graph.

Note

If your graph updates parameters, please make sure to only run Graph.param_space after those calls.

Specifically, all parameters (other than the target parameter) should already be defined. This is because Graph.param_space unrolls the loop across the parameter space for the target parameter (e.g., “clock_period”) but uses the existing values for non-target parameters. It is difficult to adjust parameters after the loop has already been unrolled.

Note that parameters are passed as environment variables. This means that parameter sweeping can be flexibly applied anywhere in the physical design flow in a very simple manner:

  1. Replace some code with a variable anywhere in your scripts

  2. Identify this variable as a parameter (i.e., in the step’s configure.yml)

  3. Use the param_space() mflowgen API to perform a sweep of that variable

This support is useful for automating design-space exploration sweeps involving one parameter or multiple parameters.

More Details

Here is a code example that sweeps the GcdUnit demo circuit across different clock targets (0.5ns, 0.75ns, 1.0ns, 1.5ns) with the open-source toolchain (yosys) and the 45nm standard cell library. Synthesis will fail timing for the 0.5ns clock target.

Set up the mflowgen demo circuit:

% mflowgen run --demo
% cd mflowgen-demo
% mkdir build && cd build

We switch to the open-source toolflow and add the clock period parameter sweep:

% (edit "../GcdUnit/.mflowgen.yml" to point to "construct-open.py")
% (edit "../GcdUnit/construct-open.py" to include the clock period parameter sweep)

  #-----------------------------------------------------------------------
  # Parameterize
  #-----------------------------------------------------------------------

  g.update_params( parameters )

  g.param_space( 'open-yosys-synthesis', 'clock_period', [0.5, 0.75, 1.0, 1.5] )

  return g

Then we run mflowgen and see the four synthesis targets with different clock periods:

% mflowgen run --design ../GcdUnit
% make status
(...)
 - build -> 3   : open-yosys-synthesis-clock_period-0.5
 - build -> 4   : open-yosys-synthesis-clock_period-0.75
 - build -> 5   : open-yosys-synthesis-clock_period-1.0
 - build -> 6   : open-yosys-synthesis-clock_period-1.5
(...)

We build all of the yosys targets:

% make 3 4 5 6 -j4

Here are the delays:

% grep "Current delay" *yosys*/mflowgen-run.log

4-open-yosys-synthesis-clock_period-0.75/mflowgen-run.log:ABC: Current delay (670.68 ps) does not exceed the target delay (750.00 ps). Upsizing is not performed.
5-open-yosys-synthesis-clock_period-1.0/mflowgen-run.log:ABC: Current delay (670.68 ps) does not exceed the target delay (1000.00 ps). Upsizing is not performed.
6-open-yosys-synthesis-clock_period-1.5/mflowgen-run.log:ABC: Current delay (670.68 ps) does not exceed the target delay (1500.00 ps). Upsizing is not performed.

The reports here show that the critical path delay through GcdUnit is 0.67ns, which meets timing for the 0.75ns, 1.0ns, and 1.5ns clock targets. No upsizing is needed for any gates in these cases.

The 0.5ns clock period is not met. In this case, yosys-abc tries to upsize gates and does better (0.569ns) but still does not meet timing.

% less 3-open-yosys-synthesis-clock_period-0.5/mflowgen-run.log
_images/gcdunit-yosys-abc-500ps.jpg

This example sweep is not particularly complex and could easily be done manually (e.g., if only a few points are needed). However, sweeping the cross product of multiple parameters at once (e.g., architectural RTL design parameters, bitwidths) quickly becomes cumbersome. In this case, mflowgen parameter sweeps become more useful.