Writing Traffic Generators in SV/Verilog - 2022.1 English

Generate traffic using the existing test bench written in the System Verilog/Verilog with slight modification to your test bench hierarchy, as explained below.

Figure 1. Test Bench Hierarchy

As shown in the figure above, the external test bench (on the left) and the Vitis emulation (on the right), both run as separate simulation processes. To establish communication between two processes using IPC, you must instantiate SIM_IPC Master/Slave modules.

Perform the following modifications:

1. Add IPC modules in the Vitis emulation design. These are available as prepackaged XOs, and you can insert them using the v++ command line as described in AXI4-Stream I/O Model for Streaming Traffic.
2. Add SIM IPC modules in your SV/V test bench. Instantiate the ipc_axis_master_mirror module inside the Traffic Generator top and make the pin level connection via an SV interface. The ipc_axis_master_mirror converts the pin level AXI transactions to generic_payload and sends through the IPC sockets to the ipc_axis_master module in the Vitis emulation design. Similarly, there is an ipc_axis_slave_mirror module that is instantiated in the Traffic Generator top to connect to the ipc_axis_slave module in the Vitis emulation design.

The same technique can be deployed to drive traffic from the external System Verilog/Verilog traffic generators/test benches to the AI Engine simulator or x86-simulator.

Figure 2. XTLM Test Bench Hierarchy