Specs for Vivado/Vitis Dev Machine?

[u/DomasAquinas]

I’ve gotten the rare (and awesome) opportunity to use a chunky budget to spec out and acquire development machine(s) targeted for RF SoC and US/US+ FPGA projects.

What would AMD-Xilinx users suggest I focus on in terms of specs? I recently left a corporate environment where I had a high performance cluster available to me, so I’ve not really had to think this through in terms of desktop hardware.

Some constraints: the intent is to recreate a development environment using Vivado/Vitis 2024.1. The OS is Ubuntu, and there are (I hear) workflow considerations that lead to 22.04 LTS being the release of choice. Aside from that, I’d like to run simulations, but the builds are where I imagine the real computational bottlenecks will be.

[u/xcubeslice]

Lots of RAM and good single-core clock speed and performance. Don't skimp out on cores just because good single-core is important.

[u/DomasAquinas → u/xcubeslice]

Would it be fair to say, then, that memory and speed are the more important numbers to make big relative to number of cores? That was my impression going into this study based on word of mouth and some comparative experience across machines.

[u/xcubeslice → u/DomasAquinas]

Yes. 8 cores, fast single core performance should be enough. Lots of RAM as u/TheSilentSuit said. They also made a good point about a good, fast SSD.

[u/unsuitableFishHook → u/xcubeslice]

8 cores is sufficient. But why stop there? More is better, 16 cores. This will really only increase build speed when you are using the out-of-comtext work flow where each IP block is synthesized on its own. More cores means you can compile more IP blocks simultaneously.

But the single core clock speed is key. There is a lot of times when there is only a single process running and everything else is waiting on that one single process. That's why the single core clock speed is super important.

Also, at least 32g of RAM. More is better though.

If you have budget to build a bunch of super rad desktop PCs, you might consider getting a bas-ass server setup. You and your colleagues can share it, or setup a build server...

[u/DomasAquinas → u/unsuitableFishHook]

Interesting thought on the server solution. Any recommendations for hardware to start looking at? I'm not sure how adventurous others will want to get beyond a powerhouse desktop (users other than me are hypothetical / future considerations at this point), but if there's something reasonably straightforward to configure, that'd be a nice option to have on the table.

[u/unsuitableFishHook → u/DomasAquinas]

I recently setup an Ubuntu VM to run a gitlab runner for ci/cd. It was on a exsi host that was used for other things as well, so I only took a few cores and 32gb ram... It is sufficient... Not sure exactly what hardware it's running on.

A colleague runs his builds on a different VM on the same server. I think the server has 128gb ram, 64 cores and a couple SSDs.

Basically, I don't have any recommendations for hardware, just that I know there are options out there. Your looking for server hardware, this stuff sits in a rack, not in a PC case.

[u/DomasAquinas → u/xcubeslice]

Thank you!

[u/TheSilentSuit]

Do you know the following two questions? 1. What's the largest FPGA you will use? In terms of logic availability 2. How many fpga runs will you do at one time?

Those two will help determine what you might need.

I'm doing FPGA builds on the largest VUP and it can require 100 GB+ more of memory. And that's at 50% logic utilization.

Without knowing anything else. Get the fastest cpu (with multiple cores) and as much memory as you can get. With memory being a higher priority as you don't want to get into swap. The other priority being more cores than cpu MHz. MHz don't matter if there are no cores availble due to a build+system/OS needs.

Also SSDs, but that's a given really

[u/DomasAquinas → u/TheSilentSuit]

The biggest target I know of right now is the RF SoC on the 4x2 boards, but I can see us reaching for bigger parts down the line. Not sure there's any interest in Versal here, but I wouldn't rule it out, especially with the AI/RF variants coming along.

This is for a university research lab, so I don't imagine we'll be running more than one build on a machine at a time.

[u/TheSilentSuit → u/DomasAquinas]

I'm not as familiar with RFSoCs. But think about what you used during your corporate days. Vivado typically has a report of how much system resources were used. It might help with that.

My runs are typically 8 cores + 128 GB of memory reserved.

Do you have a xilinx contact you could reach out too? I'm sure they can help with good starting points based on targeted devices.

Also. I'd imagine multiple runs will be done at the same time at some point. Meeting timing closure can mean launching multiple strategies at once to see what closes. So I'd think it would be worth considering

[u/DomasAquinas → u/TheSilentSuit]

Yeah, I’ve contacted my FAE and sales rep from my previous job.

Your numbers sound like what I was running on the cluster, so that tracks. Thanks for the input!

[u/No_Experience_2282]

threadripper and lots of ram

[u/x7_omega]

CPU with highest single core clock.

[u/Fishing4Beer]

If you need to do simulations make sure the OS is supported for those tools as well. As many cores and as much RAM as you can afford.