README : Kactus2
Copyright (c) 2012-2019 Tampere University
http://funbase.cs.tut.fi
Summary
Kactus2 is a toolset for designing embedded products, especially FPGA-based MP-SoCs. The aim is easier IP reusability and integration for both hardware and software. The tool is based on IEEE 1685-2014 "IP-XACT" standard.
Windows installer and tar-package for Linux are available in SourceForge
Guidelines for issue reporting and contributing are given in CONTRIBUTING.md. Other support is provided by email: kactus2@cs.tut.fi
What you can do with Kactus2
Package IPs for reuse and exchange
- Import your existing IPs as IP-XACT components
- Create new IP-XACT components and generate their HDL module headers
- Reuse IP-XACT files from any standard compatible vendor
- Reuse the IPs in your designs and connect them with wires and busses
Create HW designs with hierarchy
- Create multilevel hierarchies, where a design has multiple sub-designs
- Configure component instances in designs, including the sub-designs
- Use generator plugins to create HDL with wiring and parameterization
Integrate HW and SW
- Use memory designer to preview memory maps and address spaces in your hierarchy
- Package software to IP-XACT components and map them to hardware
- Generate makefiles that build executables with rules defined in IP-XACT components
What you cannot do with Kactus2
- Behavioral logic: Neither Kactus2 nor IP-XACT handles module implementations
- Synthesis or simulation: These require tools that are specificly created for the purpose
Examples and tutorials
Example IPs are available in GitHub here.
Video tutorials are available in Youtube.
Windows install
An installer (link above) will guide you through the installation on Windows platforms.
If you want to build Kactus2 on Windows, see separate instructions in our project management site: https://kactus2.cs.tut.fi
Linux build and run
1. Install Qt5
To build and run Kactus2, Qt5 must be installed on your system. If you already have Qt installed, you can skip to step 2. Otherwise, select installing Qt with either using a package manager (option a) or manually (option b):
a) Install Qt5 packages using a package manager (requires admin privileges). The following packages are required (on Ubuntu):
- qt5-default
- qttools5-private-dev
- qttools5-dev-tools
- libqt5svg5-dev
Example:
sudo apt-get install qt5-default qttools5-private-dev qttools5-dev-tools libqt5svg5-dev
b) Manually download and install from https://www.qt.io/download/
When using manually installed Qt5, you need to make sure that Kactus2 install is configured accordingly: Open the file configure in the Kactus2 root directory and set the path to Qt5 binaries in the variable QTBIN_PATH.
Example:
QTBIN_PATH="~/Qt/5.7/gcc_64/bin/"
Please do note the slash at the end of the path.
2. Build the sources
First, get the Kactus2 source files. We recommend using the release tar-package (link above) which has all Windows-specific files removed. Extract the files and navigate to the Kactus2 root directory.
Example:
mkdir ~/kactus2
tar -xvf kactus2-3.4.0.tar.gz -C ~/kactus2
cd ~/kactus2
Select installation either for all users (option a) or customized target (option b) below:
a) Default installation for all users (requires admin privileges).
Open file .qmake.conf and check that the paths are compatible with your Linux distribution. The defaults should work with Ubuntu 64-bit, Debian and CentOS 7 64-bit, but on some systems you may have to change lib_path from /usr/lib to /usr/lib64.
Now run following commands:
./configure
make
sudo make install
After the installation, skip to section 3.
b) Customized installation target. This option can be used for a local installation for the current user (e.g. in ~/kactus2) as well as shared installation in a specific directory (e.g. /opt/edatools/kactus2).
Open file .qmake.conf and set the installation directory in variable LOCAL_INSTALL_DIR.
Example:
LOCAL_INSTALL_DIR="~/kactus2"
By default, the shared libraries are installed in the same directory, but can be configured by setting the lib_path on line 44.
Now run the following commands:
./configure
make
make install
Run sudo make install
, if the current user has no write permissions to the target directory
(e.g. /opt/edatools/kactus2).
Finally, make sure the shared libraries can be found by the program loader. If the installation
is shared between multiple users, consider listing the libraries in /etc/ld.so.conf. For example,
create the file /etc/ld.so.conf.d/kactus2-3.4.0.conf and in it add a single line that contains the
path to the installation directory (e.g. /opt/edatools/kactus2). Run ldconfig
to update the paths
in the loader.
Please note, if you do ./configure with wrong Qt binaries, you will have to delete the generated
makefiles before configuring again. The easiest way to do this, is to run command make distclean
.
3a. Run Kactus2 GUI
There are three ways to run Kactus2 depending on your system and installation setup.
a) A default installation shared between users. Run:
/usr/bin/kactus2
b) A local installation from the installation directory. Run:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=. ./kactus2
If the library paths are set in /etc/ld.so.conf, the binary can be run directly. Example:
/opt/edatools/kactus2
c) In some systems, a link to the executable is created, if Kactus2 was installed for all users. Run:
kactus2
Please note a recent change to lower-case binary name i.e. kactus2, not Kactus2.
3b. Run Kactus2 command-line (experimental)
Some tasks may be run in the command-line without the GUI. Currently only Verilog and VHDL
generators supports this feature and can be executed with command generate_verilog
and
generate_vhdl
. Additional options are required as detailed below.
Example:
kactus2 generate_verilog -c tut.fi:cpu.logic:alu:1.0 -w structural_verilog -o ./rtl_out
This will generate structural Verilog for the -c
component tut.fi:cpu.logic:alu:1.0
and
its sub-component hierarchy defined in -w
view structural_verilog
into -o
directory ./rtl_out
.
Kactus2 supports the following general command-line options:
-h, --help
: Show the application usage help and exit.-v, --version
: Show the application version and exit.
Please note that the command-line interface is an experimental feature and very likely subject to changes in the near future.
Settings and configurations
Kactus2 uses a settings file for storing user-specific tool settings. The file default location is ~/.config/TUT/Kactus2.ini in Linux and C:\Users<username>\AppData\Roaming\TUT\Kactus2.ini in Windows. The location can be checked on the general settings page in Kactus2.
A system wide default settings file is located in /etc/xdg and C:\ProgramData, respectively. This will be used as a base for any new user-specific settings and a fallback mechanism, if the user's file is missing a requested value.
Modifying the settings files manually is not recommended and should be done only by advanced users. Most of the time all required changes can be applied in the Kactus2 GUI.
In addition, Kactus2 uses the file configure.cfg for updating the users' settings when new setting options are introduced in the tool. Please do not modify this file as it will break the compatibility with earlier versions.
Community Guidelines & Contributions
Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for details.
Contributors
Antti Kamppi, Joni-Matti Määttä, Lauri Matilainen, Timo D. Hämäläinen, Mikko Teuho, Juho Järvinen, Esko Pekkarinen, Janne Virtanen
Kactus2 is linked with Qt 5.10.1, copyright Digia Plc. (LGPL).
Kactus2 uses Icons8 provided by Icons8 LLC
Licencing
This software is licenced under the GPL2 General Public License.
Kactus2 is also available for dual licencing. Please contact kactus2@cs.tut.fi to purchase a commercial licence.
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2, June 1991 Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. Preamble The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Lesser General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too. When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things. To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it. For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights. We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software. Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations. Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all. The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow. GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION 0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you". Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does. 1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program. You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee. 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change. b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.) These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it. Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program. In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License. 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following: a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or, c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.) The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable. If distribution of executable or object code is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, then offering equivalent access to copy the source code from the same place counts as distribution of the source code, even though third parties are not compelled to copy the source along with the object code. 4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance. 5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it. 6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License. 7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program. If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances. It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice. This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License. 8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License. 9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation. 10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally. NO WARRANTY 11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION. 12. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND/OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms. To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found. <one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.> Copyright (C) <year> <name of author> This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA. Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail. If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode: Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) year name of author Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c' for details. The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program. You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names: Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program `Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker. <signature of Ty Coon>, 1 April 1989 Ty Coon, President of Vice This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Lesser General Public License instead of this License.
https://github.com/kactus2/kactus2dev.git
Issue Tracker
Last activity 1 year ago
v3.8.0 released 1 year ago
Primary language: C++
3 open issues
11 forks
11 watchers
35 stars
3278 commits by 19 contributors
activity over the last year
LibreCores data updated 7 months ago