ACME Emulated Accelerator SDV

In the following sections you will be able to download the ACME bitstream and the Operating System binary files, to install them in your FPGA device.

Getting the ACME EA bitstream

The bitstream files are the synthesis of the different RTL versions provided by the MEEP project. Each file corresponds to the status of the platform at different stages of the project. You can download any of them from the following table:

ACME Bitstream Download link
ACME EA Axx: Ariane, 4 cores Available files
ACME EA 1H16Vx: Lagarto Hun, 1 core (VPU: 16 lanes) Available files
ACME EA 4H2Vx: Lagarto Hun, 4 cores (VPU: 2 lanes) Available files
ACME EA 1HGM: Lagarto Hun, 1 core, (VPU, SA-NN, SA-HEVC) N/A

Getting the Operating System files

The Operating System image consists of two different components: the Operating System filesystem and the OpenSBI and Linux boot file. In addition you will also need the support tools package, that will help you to build the SDV. You can download all of them from the following table:

OS Component Download link
Filesystem (3 GB) Available files
OpenSBI and Linux boot file Available files
Support tools Available files

Building the ACME SDV

Once you have all the necessary files from the previous sections, you must follow the next steps to build your ACME SDV:

1. Extract the tools package in your selected working directory. You will get a directory structure similar to:

meep-os/
   filesystem/
   osbi-linux/
   tools/
acme-ea/
   bitstream/

2. Move the filesystem file (eg, fedora-fs-dx.raw) to the "filesystem" directory

3. Move the OpenSBI and Linux boot file (osbi.bin) to the "osbi-linux" directory

4. Install the Xilinx QDMA driver & tools in a directory inside the tools directory, named dma_ip_drivers-`hostname`, where the `hostname` should be resolved to the host name of your computer.

5. Now you can check that your directory structure matches this directory hierarchy:

meep-os/
   filesystem/
      fedora-fs-dx.raw
   osbi-linux/
      osbi.bin
   tools
      dma_ip_drivers-<your-computer-name>/ ... QDMA Xilinx driver & tools compiled here
      load-bitstream.sh     # script for loading bitstreams
      load-bitstream.tcl    # support tcl script for bitstream load
      load_image.sh         # support file for loading files to FPGA HBM/DDR memory
      load-ariane-hbm-reset-test.sh  # test Ariane reset, thus checking that the bootrom
                  is activated properly upon reset
      load-ariane-hbm-linux.sh       # load filesystem and OpenSBI-Linux images and boot
                  (reset the system and boot)

6. Now you can load the bitstream to the FPGA board in order to configure it with the RISC-V system:

.../acme-ea$ ./meep-os/tools/load-bitstream.sh qdma acme-ea/bitstream/<your-bitstream>

See the log output of this command as a sample: load-bitstream-log.txt

7. And load the filesystem and OpenSBI/Linux boot files:

.../acme-ea$ ./meep-os/tools/load-ariane-hbm-linux.sh

See the log output of this command as a sample: load-ariane-hbm-linux-log.txt

8. Be sure to start a terminal program (we have tested screen, picocom and minicom) on the FPGA serial device holding the UART (in our case, it is usually /dev/ttyUSB2). For example:

.../acme-ea$ picocom /dev/ttyUSB2

Be aware that the bootrom usually starts the serial communication at 115200 bauds, but the Linux system will switch to 9600 bauds. Select the proper baud rate to be able to display the system console. The serial line configuration parameters are:

Serial line configuration parameters:
    Bauds:     115200 (bootrom), 9600 (linux console)
    Bits:      8
    Parity:    No
    Stop bits: 1
    Control flow:
         Hardware: No
         Software: No

9. Fedora will boot on ACME-EA. See also the boot log of the Fedora Linux system: fedora-boot-log.txt

10. Now you can enter the system using the default Fedora 33 credentials for the root user.