PARISCV Project Page

Abstract

PARISCV is a powerful profiler designed to optimize RISC-V applications by identifying and leveraging extensions for application-specific acceleration. With a comprehensive workflow, it efficiently processes traces, performs analysis, and provides valuable insights to enhance the performance of your RISC-V based projects.

Results

Below shows the results obtained using our profiler for the applications of Embench-suite. Frequently executed instructions from common extensions are reported.

md5sum

crc32

aha-mont64

edn

huffbench

matmult-int

nettle-sha256

nettle-aes

Usage

Getting Started

Welcome to our project! This guide will help you get started quickly.

Dependencies

Before running the project, make sure you have the following dependencies installed:

python3>= 3.9.5

matplotlib

riscv toolchain

After installing the dependencies, next install the profiler.

Installing PARISCV

To install PARISCV, follow these steps:

Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/ashuthosh-mr/profiler.git
Navigate to the project directory:
cd profiler
Unzip the necessary library files:
unxz internal_folder.tar.xz
tar -xvf internal_folder.tar
Change the permissions of ext1 and pariscv.sh:
chmod +x pariscv.sh ext1

To profile the region of interest in the application, place this line before the kernel:

            unsigned long cycles_start,cycles_end;
            asm volatile ("rdcycle %0" : "=r" (cycles_start));

Similarly, place this line after the kernel:

            asm volatile ("rdcycle %0" : "=r" (cycles_end));
            printf("Total cycles:%d\n",cycles_end-cycles_start);

Profiling

To profile any given application, just run:
./pariscv.sh
Default ISA, MABI, source names are used as shown in pariscv.sh. But one can further specify the ISA flags supported, mabi and path to the source file through the following flags:
./pariscv.sh ISA=rv64gcv_zba_zbb_zbc MABI=lp64d SOURCE=../../main.c

The output shows the total cycles, commonly used extensions, and commonly used instructions within each extension.

Future work

We intend to integrate the profiler with a core generator that supports coupling of custom acceleration using custom instruction or a custom accelerator.

PARISCV: A Profiler for Application-Specific Acceleration on RISC-V