Proteus: a configurable RISC-V core

For a quick introduction to Proteus, and to cite this work, please check our extended abstract presented at the RISC-V Summit Europe '23.

Get started with Proteus

• Installation
• Building software
• Running simulations
• Synthesis
• Tests and verification

Overview

Proteus is an easily configurable RISC-V CPU implemented in SpinalHDL. It uses a plugin system to make the processor easily configurable and extensible, making the development and testing of hardware features easier. It already comes with easily replaceable or modifiable components such as branch predictors. Proteus supports the RV32IM instruction set, which includes multi-cycle instructions (e.g., MUL or blocking memory accesses in IF/MEM) and the Machine-Level ISA (CSRs, traps).

The processor is implemented on an SoC, which features integration with AXI4 and APB buses and simple peripherals (machine timer, UART, ...).

Proteus can be configured either in a classic 5-staged static pipelined mode or as a superscalar out-of-order processor with a configurable number of reorder buffer entries and execution units. Both implementations pass the riscv-tests, and the correctness of the static pipeline has been verified using riscv-formal.

Releases and extensions

Proteus uses calendar versioning with a suffix of -I and -O to differentiate between the in-order and the out-of-order pipeline implementation. The following table describes the released versions and extensions forking them.

Version	Extension(s)
24.01	-
23.03	Architectural Mimicry: Innovative Instructions to Efficiently Address Control-Flow Leakage in Data-Oblivious Programs (both 23.03-I and 23.03-O)
23.02	ProSpeCT: Provably Secure Speculation for the Constant-Time Policy (only for 23.02-O)
21.08-I	Hardware capabilities (CHERI): src/main/scala/riscv/plugins/cheri, providing the basis for the following publication: CHERI-TrEE: Flexible enclaves on capability machines.

Contributing

Pull requests and issue submissions are welcome! If you would like to get in contact with the developer team, please write to us at marton.bognar@kuleuven.be.

Installing Proteus

First, make sure this repository is recursively cloned:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/proteus-core/proteus

For getting familiar and experimenting with Proteus, we recommend working with our Docker container, which installs all prerequisites, including the RISC-V toolchain, and simulates the Newlib example code. See here for instructions on how to install Docker.

The Docker container can be built using the following command:

docker build -t proteus .

Running the container afterwards is possible with:

docker run -i -h "proteus" -t proteus

If, instead of using Docker, you want to install Proteus locally, you can follow the installation steps from our Dockerfile, adjusting them to your setup as needed:

• Install OpenJDK (tested with openjdk-17-jdk) and Verilator
• Install sbt: https://www.scala-sbt.org
• Install the RISC-V toolchain with Newlib support, selecting the rv32im_zicsr architecture: https://github.com/riscv/riscv-gnu-toolchain

Building software

To run software on Proteus, it needs to be compiled by a RISC-V toolchain with Newlib support (this is automatically installed with Docker). Newlib is an implementation of libc for embedded devices. Our board support package and an example project can be found in our Newlib repository, which is included in this project as a submodule. This example program is compiled and run on Proteus in our Dockerfile.

Memory layout

The default binary configuration used in Proteus has the following memory layout:

• 0x80000000: 10 MiB of RAM initialized with the given memory file
• 0x20000000: mtime register
• 0x20000008: mtimecmp register
• 0x10000000: Custom character device

The CPU starts executing at 0x80000000.

The custom character device will print any stored ASCII character to the console. When the ASCII EOT (0x4) is stored, the simulation is halted.

Running simulations

There are different ways of building the hardware implementation and running simulations on it. In the following, these methods will be explained. In general, if you intend to use the dynamic, out-of-order pipeline instead of the 5-stage static pipeline, substitute riscv.Core with riscv.CoreDynamic in the instructions.

The most common way of running programs is to create a standalone Proteus simulator, which can be done with the following command:

make -C sim CORE=riscv.CoreExtMem

This creates an executable at sim/build/sim which can be called with a flat binary file as input:

./sim/build/sim program.bin

ELF files can be converted to a flat binary with objcopy:

riscv32-unknown-elf-objcopy -O binary program.elf program.bin

Examining simulation output

Running a simulation the above way creates a VCD file called sim.vcd in the directory the simulation is run from.

We provide a bare-bones sim.gtkw GTKWave savefile to examine this VCD file. You might need to update the three hardcoded paths in sim.gtkw before using it. Most importantly, this file uses the res/disas.py script to decode binary instructions into their textual representation for easier debugging. This script can also be loaded by right-clicking on an instruction signal (IR registers) and selecting it from Data Format > Translate Filter Process > Enable and Select.

Alternative ways of running simulations

As opposed to the method described above, the following two methods do not require building a standalone simulator binary, they recompile the Scala design on each invocation (which is useful when making changes to the hardware). These methods require the executable file to be converted to the Intel HEX format, which can also be accomplished with objcopy:

riscv32-unknown-elf-objcopy -O ihex program.elf program.ihex

It is possible to create a Verilog design (Core.v) that uses hardcoded arrays to store the program memory:

sbt 'runMain riscv.Core program.ihex'

The resulting Core.v file can subsequently be run with any Verilog simulator. For convenience, we provide a shorthand that automatically runs the simulation with Verilator:

sbt 'runMain riscv.CoreSim mem.ihex'

This method will generate a value change dump file at simWorkspace/Core/test.vcd which can be examined as described earlier.

Synthesis

To synthesize the design for an FPGA, we use Xilinx Vivado. The standard edition can be downloaded for free here. These instructions were tested with version 2022.2.

Follow these steps to create a project with Proteus and run the synthesis:

0. Make sure that you have a Core.v file in the root directory of this project (this can be generated by running make sim, copied from the Docker container if needed).
1. Launch Vivado, and start the Create Project wizard.
2. Choose the project name and location as desired.
3. Project type: RTL Project.
4. Add sources: select Core.v and synthesis/Top.v. Do not check "Copy sources into project" or "Scan and add RTL include files into project".
5. Add constraints: select synthesis/Constraints.xdc.
6. Default part: select your target FPGA, e.g., xc7a50ticsg324-1L. Proteus requires at least 186 I/O ports.
7. Finish the wizard.
8. When the project is open, if Top.v is not selected as the top module (shown in bold), right-click on it and "Set as Top".
9. If needed, change the timing constraint in Constraints.xdc or regenerate Core.v by running make sim.
10. Run Implementation

After the first run, the project can be opened from Vivado and the last two steps can be repeated to obtain up-to-date measurements.

Tests and verification

Run the riscv-tests unit tests (make sure the RISC-V toolchain is in your PATH):

make -C tests CORE=riscv.CoreExtMem

To run riscv-formal, first install its prerequisites and make sure all the tools are in your PATH. Then, run the following (which will take several hours to complete):

make -C formal -j<n>