Firstly, we always use a byte array for fine grained activity flags
instead of a bit vector (we used to use a byte array only if we had
parallel mtasks). The byte vector can be set more cheaply in eval,
closing about 1/3 of the gap in performance between compiling with
or without --trace on SweRV EH1. The speed of tracing itself is not
measurably different.
Secondly, we prune the activity tracking such that if a set of activity
flag combinations only guard a small number of signals, we will turn
those signals into awayls traced signals. This avoids code which
sometimes tests dozens of activity flags just to subsequently check one
signal and dump it if it's value changed. We can just check the signal
state straight instead, and not bother with the flags. This removes
about 30% of activity flags in SweRV EH1, and makes both single threaded
VCD and FST tracing 8-9% faster.
- Allow arbitrary number of open array dimensions, not just 3. Note
right now this only works with the array querying functions specified
in IEEE 1800-2017 H.12.2
- Issue error when passing dynamic array or queue as DPI open array
(currently unsupported)
- Also tweaked AstVar::vlArgTypeRecurse, which should now error or fail
for unsupported types.
- Issue an error when --build is used together with --make
- When given --build, always use GNU Make to perform the build
- Update documentation (examples were good as they were)
- Remove the broken t_flag_build_cmake test
Fixes#2280
Use SIMD intrinsics to render VCD traces.
I have measured 10-40% single threaded performance increase with VCD
tracing on SweRV EH1 and lowRISC Ibex using SSE2 intrinsics to render
the trace. Also helps a tiny bit with FST, but now almost all of the FST
overhead is in the FST library.
I have reworked the tracing routines to use more precisely sized
arguments. The nice thing about this is that the performance without the
intrinsics is pretty much the same as it was before, as we do at most 2x
as much work as necessary, but in exchange there are no data dependent
branches at all.
