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Benchmarks for RISCV Processor
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The benchmarks make use of the RISCV C compiler toolchain. You will need
to include a bmark.mk makefile fragment in each benchmark directory. The
fragment should include the object files and a rule to actually link
these object files into an executable. There are a couple important
points to make about the toolchain.
+ The toolchain sets the stack pointer to memory address 0x20000 so your
main memory _must_ be larger than 0x20000 bytes or else the stack will
get wrapped around and overwrite program data.
+ The stack grows down from 0x20000 and your program is loaded at 0x1000.
If you have a very large program and have lots of very big arrays
declared on the stack your stack could overwrite your program. Be aware.
+ You cannot use standard clib functions (like memcopy or strcat). You
cannot use system calls and thus cannot use printf.
+ You cannot access the simulated command line - ie you cannot use argc
and argv within main.
+ You may have to increase the timeout check in your test harness to
allow longer programs to run (you can do this from the command line
option +max-cycles with the standard test harness)
+ The compiler loads the program at 0x1000. It does not insert exception
setup code. So if you are careful with what C you use it will only
generate code in the riscv lab1 subset. If you use multiplies, shorts,
and chars it could generate mul, lh, and lb instructions. Be aware.
+ You can write assembly in C - you need to do this to write tohost to 1
to indicate when the benchmark is done. Look at the example
benchmarks to see how this is done. You can find more information
about how to write assembly in C here:
http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Extended-Asm.html
+ Debugging C compiled code on the RISCV processor is a real pain. It is
hard to associate the assembly with the C code and there is no
debugger. So if you encounter a bug in your processor when running a C
benchmark you can try to debug it, but you might have better luck
adding more assembly tests to your test suite.
+ To avoid having the compiler try and use a global pointer (ie using
register 28 to point to a space where small global variables are
stored) you need to use the -G 0 command line option.