Re: [libre-riscv-dev] Rough timing estimate in yosys

From: Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@lkcl.net>
To: Libre-RISCV General Development <libre-riscv-dev@lists.libre-riscv.org>
Subject: Re: [libre-riscv-dev] Rough timing estimate in yosys
Date: Mon, 18 May 2020 16:05:00 +0100
Message-ID: <CAPweEDx4NUxJRbYp9oNKBWxM1XDVjHRnD2TxhsCOfog=88gmfw@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <b8db8150-bc06-63c7-49c4-c6536f6bed64@gmail.com>

On Monday, May 18, 2020, Michael Nolan <mtnolan2640@gmail.com> wrote:

> With all the work going on designing functional units, I was wondering if
> there was a way to get a rough estimate of the maximum frequency a module
> can run at. I can get the longest path from running yosys -p "read_ilang
> module.il; synth; ltp", but that just prints out the cells between
> register A and register B.

oh, good.  that's a useful discovery.

> I realize that the actual timing is going to depend on layout, but is
> there a way to get a rough estimate, say by passing in a cell library or
> just a rule of thumb of ~500ps per cell?

i believe it is calculated based on the switching time of a given
transistor, at both the geometry, and also a given voltage.

a chain of such transistors is then multiplied by the longest path.

at the speeds we are doing, speed of light is not a major factor: it will
be however at 28nm or below.

also affecting the switching time is the fanout.  if one gate tries to
drive 200 clearly this will either fail or just take a hell of a long time.

to solve that, buffers must be inserted into the line and of course those
also add switching delay.

>
> On a semi-related note, running ltp on a pipeline shows that there's a
> bunch of loops.
>
> From running synth and ltp on the logical pipeline:
>
> Warning: Detected loop at \stage_o$next [63] in pipe

hmm i do not know.

we are doing an design where the registers can be held until acknowledged
by ready/valid signalling: it's possible that the storage of the register
is interpreted as "a loop".

can you raise a bugreport about it so thatbit can be investigated?  mention
that a small unit test should be made.

l.

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