This article was originally published on October 24, 2022.
Editor’s Note: This content is contributed by Snehal Ullagaddi, Product Marketing Manager for Vivado ML Editions.
The new Vivado® ML Editions 2022.2 release offers several major improvements and enhancements to the tool set.
Introducing Power Design Manager
Power Design Manager (PDM) is the new, next-generation power estimation platform designed to bring accurate and consistent power estimation capabilities for Versal® devices and Kria™ SOMs. Power Design Manager is the preferred power estimation tool for the Versal product family, including Versal Prime, Premium, AI Core, and AI Edge series.
With enhanced wizards for Versal ACAP hard IP blocks and simple migration from XPE to PDM, you can get accurate power estimation using PDM.
Intelligent Design Run (IDR) Enhancements for Versal and UltraScale+ Devices
Intelligent Design Run (IDR) is a pushbutton flow for timing closure that requires minimal user intervention. With 2022.2, we have enabled IDR for the first time for Versal devices. Using IDR, we see an average of 5% QoR improvement for Versal ACAP designs and 10% for UltraScale+™ device designs. The comparison is for designs using the Explore strategy vs. the IDR flow. To compare QoR, we measure worst negative slack (WNS) across a range of designs. WNS is a measure of slack and the best value for WNS is 0 nanoseconds.
The above graph shows the benchmark results run on 48 Versal ACAP customer designs using both the Explore strategy and Intelligent Design Runs. For these 48 designs, IDR runs have an average of 5% improvement in WNS.
IDR was also run for a set of designs targeting UltraScale+ devices. The graph below shows the benchmark results run on 36 customer designs using both the Explore strategy and Intelligent Design Runs. For these designs, IDR runs have an average of 10% improvement in WNS.
Incremental Implementation Enhancements
The Incremental implementation flow in the Vivado IDE enables you to reuse portions of your design from one run to the next, saving runtime and increasing predictability.
With 2022.2, UltraScale+ device designs have a 1.4X compile time speed up compared to the default flow. Incremental implementation for Versal monolithic devices is also now available.
The benchmark results for 68 UltraScale+ customer designs using both the default flow and the Incremental flow show 1.4X compile time improvement.
Dynamic Function eXchange (DFX) Enhancements
Abstract Shell is a feature that helps reduce compile time for all child reconfigurable module runs. The 2022.2 release enables Abstract Shell support for Versal devices.
Abstract shell now offers project-based support. Project-based mode support allows the tool to automatically manage your design flow and design data. Using project mode, the Vivado IDE tracks the history of the design and stores pertinent design information.
In addition, Dynamic Function eXchange now supports Versal Premium SSI devices.
Dynamic Function eXchange has the ability to dynamically modify blocks of logic by downloading partial bit files while the remaining logic continues to operate without interruption.
Next Steps
Learn more about what's new in Vivado ML Editions 2022.2 in the release notes.
Download Vivado ML Editions 2022.2 with the latest and newest features and functionalities for greater productivity and performance than even before.
