Kernel Location Constraints - 2021.1 English

Versal ACAP AI Engine Programming Environment User Guide (UG1076)

Document ID
UG1076
Release Date
2021-07-19
Version
2021.1 English

When building large graphs with multiple subgraphs, it is sometimes useful to control the exact mapping of kernels to AI Engines, either relative to other kernels or in an absolute sense. The AI Engine compiler provides a mechanism to specify location constraints for kernels, which when used with the C++ template class specification, provides a powerful mechanism to create a robust, scalable, and predictable mapping of your graph onto the AI Engine array. It also reduces the choices for the mapper to try, which can considerably speed up the mapper. Consider the following graph specification:

#include <adf.h>
#include "kernels.h
#define NUMCORES (COLS*ROWS)
using namespace adf;

template <int COLS, int ROWS, int STARTCOL, int STARTROW>
class indep_nodes_graph1 : public graph {
 public:
   kernel kr[NUMCORES];
   port<input> datain[NUMCORES] ;
   port<output> dataout[NUMCORES] ;
  
 indep_nodes_graph1() {
  for (int i = 0; i < COLS; i++) {
    for (int j = 0; j < ROWS; j++) {
      int k = i*ROWS + j;
      kr[k] = kernel::create(mykernel);
      source(kr[k])  = "kernels/kernel.cc";
      runtime<ratio>(kr[k]) = 0.9;
      location<kernel>(kr[k]) = tile(STARTCOL+i, STARTROW+j);
    }
  }
  for (int i = 0; i < NUMCORES; i++) {
    connect<stream, window<64> >(datain[i], kr[i].in[0]);
    connect<window<64>, stream >(kr[i].out[0], dataout[i]);
  }
 };
};

The template parameters identify a COLS x ROWS logical array of kernels (COLS x ROWS = NUMCORES) that are placed within a larger logical device of some dimensionality starting at (STARTCOL, STARTROW) as the origin. Each kernel in that graph is constrained to be placed on a specific AI Engine. This is accomplished using an absolute location constraint for each kernel placing it on a specific processor tile. For example, the following declaration would create a 1 x 2 kernel array starting at offset (3,2). When embedded within a 4 x 4 logical device topology, the kernel array is constrained to the top right corner.

indep_nodes_graph1<1,2,3,2> mygraph;
Important: Earlier releases used location<absolute>(k), function to specify kernel constraints and proc(x,y) function to specify a processor tile location. These functions are now deprecated. Instead, use location<kernel>(k) to specify the kernel constraints and tile(x,y) to identify a specific tile location. See Adaptive Data Flow Graph Specification Reference for more information.