Installation

Although camip dependencies are listed under install_requires and requirements.txt, some packages must be installed beforehand due to setup-time dependencies. To install the setup-time dependencies, execute the following commands in a terminal:

pip install "numpy>=1.9.0" "jinja2>=2.7.3" "Cython>=0.21" "pandas>=0.14.1" "paver>=1.2.3" "numexpr>=2.0.0"

After installing setup dependencies, camip can be installed from the Python package index using pip, as follows:

pip install camip

Usage

After installing camip, a VPR v5 format .net netlist file can be placed using the camip.bin.place_vpr_net script. The usage information for the camip.bin.place_vpr_net script is shown below:

python -m camip.bin.place_vpr_net [-h] [-o OUTPUT_PATH | -d OUTPUT_DIR]
                                  [-i INNER_NUM] [-C] [-I IO_CAPACITY]
                                  [-s SEED]
                                  vpr_net_file vpr_arch_file

Run Concurrent Associated Moves Iterative Placement (CAMIP) on VPR v5
netlist (`.net`) file.

positional arguments:
  vpr_net_file
  vpr_arch_file

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -o OUTPUT_PATH, --output_path OUTPUT_PATH
  -d OUTPUT_DIR, --output_dir OUTPUT_DIR
  -i INNER_NUM, --inner-num INNER_NUM
  -I IO_CAPACITY, --io-capacity IO_CAPACITY
  -s SEED, --seed SEED

Input

Below is an example netlist in VPR v5 .net format. Please see here for details on the file format.

# `test.net` - Example netlist with 14 blocks
.global clk

.input block_0
pinlist: clk

.input block_1
pinlist:    net_1

.input block_2
pinlist:    net_2

.clb block_3
pinlist:    net_1  open  open  open   net_3  open
subblock: block_3 0 open open open  4  open

.clb block_4
pinlist:    net_1   net_2   net_8  open   net_4  open
subblock: block_4 0 1 2 open  4  open

.clb block_5
pinlist:    net_1   net_2  open  open   net_5  open
subblock: block_5 0 1 open open  4  open

.clb block_6
pinlist:    net_3   net_4  open  open   net_6  clk
subblock: block_6 0 1 open open  4 5

.clb block_7
pinlist:    net_4  open  open  open   net_7  open
subblock: block_7 0 open open open  4  open

.clb block_8
pinlist:    net_5  open  open  open   net_8  clk
subblock: block_8 0 open open open  4 5

.clb block_9
pinlist:    net_6   net_1  open  open   net_9  open
subblock: block_9 0 1 open open  4  open

.clb block_10
pinlist:    net_7   net_8  open  open   net_10  clk
subblock: block_10 0 1 open open  4 5

.output block_11
pinlist:    net_9

.output block_12
pinlist:    net_7

.output block_13
pinlist:    net_10

Output

The camip.bin.place_vpr_net script outputs two files:

1. A .out file in VPR v5 placement format.
2. A .h5 file in HDF5 format.

The .out file contains an ASCII representation of the block positions in VPR v5 placement format. This file can be routed using VPR v5 using the -route_only option. See the VPR project documentation for more information.

The .h5 file is not required for routing, but contains the final block positions and additional statistics gathered during placement. The file is in HDF5 format and can be browsed using tools such as HDFView or ViTables. For in-depth analysis, the data tables in the HDF5 file can be opened, for example, using the Python pandas package. See below for details.

Note that example output files for the .net file listed above can be found here (.out) and here (.h5).

VPR .out placement output

The following is an example placement in VPR v5 .out format. Please see here for details on the file format.

Netlist file: test.net Architecture file: 4lut_sanitized.arch
Array size: 3 x 3 logic blocks

#block name     x   y   subblk
#----------     --  --  ------
block_0         0   3   0
block_1         4   2   0
block_2         4   2   1
block_3         1   1   0
block_4         2   2   0
block_5         3   2   0
block_6         2   1   0
block_7         1   2   0
block_8         2   3   0
block_9         3   1   0
block_10        1   3   0
block_11        4   1   0
block_12        0   3   1
block_13        1   4   0

HDF output

• /params: Parameters used for placement, including random seed, starting temperature, and starting radius limit.
• /block_positions: A table containing the final position of each block (i.e., the placement). Each row corresponds to a block and contains the following fields:
  • index (string): Block name from the `.net file.
  • x (uint32): Block x position.
  • y (uint32): Block y position.
  • z (uint32): Block z position (i.e., subblock).
  • type (uint32):
    • 0: Logic block.
    • 1: Input block.
    • 2: Output block.
• /place_stats: A table containing the final position of each block (i.e., the placement). Each row corresponds to an outer loop iteration of the simulated anneal and contains the following fields:
  • index (int64): Iteration index.
  • start (float64): Iteration start time (seconds since epoch).
  • end (float64): Iteration end time (seconds since epoch).
  • temperature (float64): Iteration temperature.
  • cost (float64): Cost after iteration.
  • success_ratio (float64): Fraction of moves accepted in the iteration.
  • radius_limit (float64): Iteration radius limit (i.e., max move distance in either dimension).
  • evaluated_move_count (int64): Number moves evaluated during iteration.

Note that the start and end times correspond to the time spent include all calculations that contribute to placement, but do not include time to record the placement statistics for each iteration.

The total placement time (not including loading of the netlist and initial population of data structures) can be computed by summing the difference of the end and start time of each iteration.