Introduction

In order to facilitate customers to use OKKernel more quickly, a simple framework is built in the demo. Users can easily add new customized operators to the framework.

Currently, the following three cases are supported

  • PCIe mode：the host is an X86 processor.

  • SoC mode：the host is an on-chip A53 processor.

  • C-Model mode：the codes run on the software simulator and can be used in development and debugging stage. This mode only supports X86 processor.

Compilation Tools

Since host and device run on different processors, they need to use their respective compilers.

For host,

  • If PCIe mode is used, the local Linux GCC compiler can be used.

  • If SoC mode is used and developing on the on-chip A53 machine, the local Linux GCC compiler can be used.

  • If SoC mode is used and developing on X86 machine, a cross compiler of X86-ARM is needed.

For device,

  • An ARM9 32-bit compiler is needed.

User can download the compilation tools by running

$source ./prepare_toolchains.sh

The downloads will be stored in the folder ../toolchains_dir/, and the script will automatically set the environment variable CROSS_TOOLCHAINS path to the toolchains.

When using the toolchains later, user can just set the environment variable by running

$export CROSS_TOOLCHAINS=path/to/toolchains

Header Files and Libraries

For header files, okk.h (atomic function APIs for device) and bmlib_runtime.h (runtime APIs for host) are needed. User may need to copy them to include/.

For libraries, libbmlib.so (runtime APIs for host), firmware.a (basic firmware with ICACHE disabled) and firmware_en_icache.a (basic firmware with ICACHE enabled) are needed. User may need to

  • PCIe mode: copy libbmlib.so, firmware.a and firmware_en_icache.a to lib/pcie/.

  • SoC mode: copy libbmlib.so, firmware.a and firmware_en_icache.a to lib/soc/.

  • C-Model mode: copy libbmlib.so to lib/cmodel/.

All the header files and library files can be found in the SDK.

Develop

Referring to Programming on Device and Programming on Host, users can develop customized kernel functions and launch them.

The code files for device should be placed in device/ and preffered with prefix bm_device_. The code files for host should be placed in host/.

Compile and Update Firmware

The compilation options are as follows

Argument

Options

Default

Description

HOST_ARCH

x86/aarch64

x86

x86 - PCIe mode，aarch64 - SoC mode

USING_CMODEL

0/1

0

Flag of C-Model mode, 1 - On, 0 - Off

DEBUG

0/1

0

Flag of debug mode, 1 - On, 0 - Off

ENABLE_ICACHE

0/1

0

Flag of ICACHE, 1 - Enabled, 0 - Disabled

Supposing developing on X86 machine, for PCIe mode, run

$make okk

For SoC mode, run

$make okk HOST_ARCH=aarch64

For C-Model mode, run

$make okk USING_CMODEL=1

The compiling outputs are in build/pcie/, build/soc/ or build/cmodel/. In these folders, an execution file named load_firmware is generated, user can run it to update firmware to device. In PCIe mode, run

$cd build/pcie
$./load_firmware

In SoC mode and developing on X86 machine, copy folder build/soc to the same path on SoC, then run

$cd build/soc
$./load_firmware

If in C-Model mode, there is no need to update firmware, just need to compile.

Execute

In SoC mode and developing on X86 machine, the path to libraries may be appended to the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH by

$export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/path/to/lib/

User can execute the host application

$./build/MODE/hello_world

User can view the print information on device by

$dmesg