Dynamatic

Dynamatic is an academic, open-source high-level synthesis compiler that produces synchronous dynamically-scheduled circuits from C/C++ code. Dynamatic generates synthesizable RTL which currently targets Xilinx FPGAs and delivers significant performance improvements compared to state-of-the-art commercial HLS tools in specific situations (e.g., applications with irregular memory accesses or control-dominated code). The fully automated compilation flow of Dynamatic is based on MLIR. It is customizable and extensible to target different hardware platforms and easy to use with commercial tools such as Vivado (Xilinx) and Modelsim (Mentor Graphics).

We welcome contributions and feedback from the community. If you would like to participate, please check out our contribution guidelines and/or join our Zulip community server.

Setting up Dynamatic

There are currently two ways to setup and use Dynamatic locally.

1. Build from source (recommended). We support building from source on Linux and on Windows (through WSL). See our simple build instructions below, which should work out-of-the-box for any apt-based or pacman-based Linux distribution. Different distributions may require cosmetic changes to the dependencies you have to install before running Dynamatic.

2. Use the provided virtual machine. We provide an Ubuntu-based virtual machine (VM) that already has Dynamatic, Modelsim, and our dataflow circuit visualizer set up. This machine was originally set-up for the Dynamatic Reloaded tutorial given at the FPGA'24 conference in Monterey, California. You can use it to simply follow the tutorial (available in the repository's documentation) or as a starting point to use/modify Dynamatic in general.

Using Dynamatic

To get started using Dynamatic (after setting it up), check out our introductory tutorial, which guides you through your first compilation of C code into a synthesizable dataflow circuit! If you want to start modifying Dynamatic and are new to MLIR or compilers in general, our MLIR primer and pass creation tutorial will help you take your first steps.

For an high-level overview of the project's structure and of our contribution guidelines. see our Getting Started page.

Building from source

The following instructions can be used to setup Dynamatic from source. If you intend to modify Dynamatic's source code and/or build the interactive dataflow circuit visualizer, you can check our advanced build instructions to learn how to customize the build process to your needs.

1. Install dependencies required by the project. These are: working C and C++ toolchains (compiler, linker), cmake and ninja for building the project, Python (3.6 or newer), GraphViz to work with .dot files, Boost's regex library, and git.

   On apt-based Linux distributions (requires sudo):

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install clang lld ccache cmake ninja-build python3 graphviz libboost-regex-dev git 

   On pacman-based Linux distributions (requires sudo):

   sudo pacman -Syu
   sudo pacman -S clang lld ccache cmake ninja python graphviz boost git 

   clang, lld, and ccache are not stictly required but significantly speed up (re)builds. If you do not wish to install them, call the build script with the --disable-build-opt flag to prevent their usage.

2. Clone the project and its submodules. Dynamatic depends on a fork of Polygeist (C/C++ frontend for MLIR), which itself depends on LLVM/MLIR.

   # Either clone with HTTPS...
   git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/EPFL-LAP/dynamatic.git
   # ...or SSH
   git clone --recurse-submodules git@github.com:EPFL-LAP/dynamatic.git

   This creates a dynamatic folder in your current working directory.

3. Build the project. Run the build script from the directory created by the clone command (check out our advanced build instructions to see how you can customize the build process and/or build the interactive dataflow visualizer).

   cd dynamatic
   chmod +x ./build.sh
   ./build.sh --release

   If everything went well, you should see # ===--- Build successful! ---=== displayed at the end of the build script's output.

4. Run the Dynamatic testsuite. After building the project, or at any time during development, you can run Dynamatic's testsuite from the top-level build folder using ninja.

   # From the "dynamatic" folder created by the clone command
   cd build
   ninja check-dynamatic