Project Overview
FireSim is a cycle-accurate, FPGA-accelerated scale-out computer system simulation platform. It is built on top of Rocket Chip, an open-source RISC-V SoC generator, and leverages the Chisel hardware construction language. FireSim is capable of simulating large-scale multiprocessor systems with high fidelity and performance. It is also capable of running real-world software stacks, including Linux, Apache, Memcached, and Redis. It requires the design to fit into one FPGA, which limits the scale of the system on chip (SoC) that can be simulated. FireAxe is an extension work that aims at breaking this limit by enabling FireSim to run on multiple FPGAs.
On top of normal host-CPU FireSim bridges, FireAxe also introduces the ability to connect multiple FPGAs end-to-end. This allows the simulation of a large-scale system to run at a more satisfactory speed. We also designed and implemented the multi-FPGA metasimulation capability allowing users to debug splitted designs in verilator.