SteelBrew

This reporsitory contains SteelBrew, the Bachelor's project by Rasmus Wiuff (rwiuff@gmail.com).

Contents

1. Requirements
2. Download and usage
3. SteelBrew commands
4. Todo list

Requirements

Verilator, GNU Make and gcc is required to run the software.

If on Windows, install and enable Ubuntu on WSL.

A guide can be found here.

For installing Verilator follow the guide here.

Download and usage

As of now the project is run by downloading the repo:

git clone https://github.com/rwiuff/SteelBrew.git

To play around with the demo do as follows:

1. Open the cloned repo in your favourite Gradle enabled editor.
2. Go to the file

   app/src/main/java/org/rwiuff/steelbrew/Driver.java

3. Edit the driver and run the java application.

SteelBrew commands

Initialise the testing environment

Start the tests by creating a SteelBrew object as such:

SteelBrew steelBrew = new SteelBrew();

Then if on Windows, enable WSL:

Forge.enableWSL(true);

Adding a device:

Devices can easily be added with the following:

Brewer dut = new Brewer("dut");

It is important that the string given to the Brewer constructor matches the filename of the .sv file containing the device under test SystemVerilog code.

To set the number of clockcycles:

dut.clocks(n);

with n being some integer.

The signals used in the tests are declared using the Signal object:

Signal in = new Signal("in_valid", 1);

where the signal name matches the signal in the device code. The 1 is the signal width and is for later versions of SteelBrew.

Defining tests

The test scenarios are created using a Batch:

Batch batch = new Batch("Tests");

The use the following commands to carry out tests:

• peek to see the value of a previously defined signal

  batch.peek(signal);
  

• poke to change the value of a previously defined signal

  batch.poke(signal, BigInteger.ONE);
  

• step to go to the next clock cycle

  batch.step();
  

• expect to raise an alarm if some signal does not match a given value

  batch.expect(signal, BigInteger.ONE);
  

Running simulations

Once the tests are defined, add them to the DUT:

dut.brew(batch);

Then, run the simulations:

Forge.simulate();

Auxilary commands

From a declared SteelBrew object, there are commands to clean the working directory:

• .cleanAux() for removing the testbenches, waveforms and stamps.
• .dleanObj() for removing the obj_dir
• .clean() for executing both of the above

Todo list

• Clean up the STDOUT for a nicer user experience.
• Rewrite testbench heuristics to allow for time-independent tests.
• Implement assertions
• Implement ABV as per SVA
• Enable Verilator multithreading
• Refactor into deployable plugin