Stream-Based Access - 2023.2 English

AI Engine Kernel and Graph Programming Guide (UG1079)

Document ID
UG1079
Release Date
2023-12-04
Version
2023.2 English

With a stream-based access model, the kernels receive an input stream or an output stream of typed data as an argument. Each access to these streams is synchronized, i.e., reads stall if the data is not available in the stream and writes stall if the stream is unable to accept new data.

An AI Engine supports two 32-bit input stream ports with id=0 or 1 and two 32-bit output stream ports with id=0 or 1. This ID is supplied as an argument to the stream object constructors. The AI Engine compiler automatically allocates the input and output stream port IDs from left to right in the argument list of a kernel. Multiple kernels mapped to the same AI Engine are not allowed to share stream ports unless the streams are packet switched (see Explicit Packet Switching).
public:
  input_plio din;
  output_plio dout;
  adf::kernel k0,k1;
...
connect <stream> (din.out[0], k1.in[0]);
connect <stream> (k1.out[0], k2.in[0]);
connect <stream> (k2.out[0], dout.in[0]);
There is also a direct stream communication channel between the accumulator register of one AI Engine and the physically adjacent core, called a cascade. The cascade stream is connected within the AI Engine array in a snake-like linear fashion from AI Engine processor to processor.
connect <cascade> (k1.out[1], k2.in[1]);

The stream data structures are automatically inferred by the AI Engine compiler from data flow graph connections, and are automatically declared in the wrapper code implementing the graph control. The kernel functions merely operate on pointers to stream data structures that are passed to them as arguments. There is no need to declare these stream data structures in data flow graph or kernel program.

Stream Connection for Multi-Rate Processing

Multi-rate analysis is not an easy task when it comes to streams and packet-streams connections if there is no user specification. Use constraints to specify how many samples the kernel will read from the input stream or pktstream input, and how many samples the kernel will write to the stream or pktstream output, as shown below:
// constraint to specify samples per iteration for stream/pktstream ports to support multirate connections
constraint<uint32_t> samples_per_iteration(adf::port<adf::input>& p);
constraint<uint32_t> samples_per_iteration(adf::port<adf::output>& p);
The constraint keyword need the sample datatype as a template value and the function samples_per_iteration is applied to the input or the output of the kernel. The related stream can be connected to another stream of a buffer.
Note: The multi-rate analysis pass calculates the rate for only those stream/pktstream ports for which adf::samples_per_iteration (>0) is specified.