Debugging in Software Emulation - 2021.2 English

Vitis Unified Software Platform Documentation: Application Acceleration Development (UG1393)

Document ID
UG1393
Release Date
2022-03-29
Version
2021.2 English
Important: The following steps describe debugging from the command line. However, the Vitis IDE offers a standalone debug environment for use with the Vitis application acceleration projects created from the command line. Refer to Using the Standalone Debug Flow for more information.

The Vitis unified software platform supports typical software debugging for the host code at all times, the kernel code when running in software emulation mode, and at points during hardware emulation mode. This is a standard software debug flow using breakpoints, stepping through code, analyzing variables, and forcing the code into specific states.

The following figure shows the debug flow during software emulation for the host and kernel code (written in C/C++ or OpenCL™ ) using the GNU debugging (GDB) tool. Notice the two instances of GDB to separately debug the host and kernel processes, and the use of the debug server (xrt_server).

Figure 1. Software Emulation

Xilinx recommends iterating the design as much as possible in Software Emulation, which takes little compile time and executes quickly. For more detailed information on software emulation, see Software Emulation.