Hackathon at Wolfram Technology Conference 2018 (Russia)
Wolfram Research Hackathon 2018
We connected Wolfram Mathematica with SCR1 microcontroller core. For this purpose, we developed a driver for SCR1 based on the Wolfram Device Framework. In our project SCR1 is not a hardware device but an RTL code of processor written in SystemVerilog.
A chip design workflow is a complicated multistage process. At the design stage, engineers describe their solutions with the terminology of the register-transfer level (RTL) using RTL languages such as SystemVerilog. At the verification stage, they have to prove that the design is correct and this is the most complex phase of development. Wolfram Mathematica can help in verification providing comprehensive analytical and visualisation features.
In the project, we used SCR1 as an example of an RTL code because SCR1 is an open-source microcontroller core which is a RISC-V compatible processor. RISC-V is a computer architecture which is open too. The source files of SCR1 can be found at http:https://github.com/syntacore/scr1. We present a solution where we can substitute SCR1 with any other RTL design. So our project is extendable, and we may say that we built a workflow involving Wolfram Mathematica. The project aims to demonstrate a potential application for Wolfram Mathematica in the semiconductor industry.
The Wolfram Device Framework creates symbolic objects that represent external devices. In our case, this is the SCR1 processor. It is the frontend of our system. A description of the backend is in the next section.
The SCR1 symbolic object has properties and three groups of methods — read, write and execute. In our project, users can interact with general purpose registers and memory of the SCR1. For this demonstration we additionally provided access to some wires such as a memory data bus and the branching logic in the processor pipeline. Read the documentation by clicking on the link below.
The driver encapsulates lower-level interactions with the SCR1. We cannot use SystemVerilog in Wolfram Mathematica directly. That is why we converted the SCR1 code to C++ code by Verilator software (https://www.veripool.org/wiki/verilator). This program is an open-source Verilog/SystemVerilog simulator. We wrapped generated C++ code with functions to communicate with Wolfram Mathematica through the Wolfram LibraryLink. The full scheme of the project is below.
