Demo of Rocket Chip using ESSENT

This repo shows the ease of using Rocket Chip with ESSENT. To build the simulator (using ESSENT):

$ make emulator

To run a microbenchmark to see it works:

$ make test

The demo uses a Makefile to automate the various steps. Since Rocket Chip already uses Verilator, the changes required to are all confined to emulator.cc. A quick overview of the flow:

• Clone the submodules to bring in the needed parts
• Use the Rocket Chip repo to generate a FIRRTL file for the design. Note: this is the longest step, as the Rocket Chip repo will download and build its own version of Verilator. The Verilator version of the simulator is handy for comparison.
• Use ESSENT to produce C++ (TestHarness.h) for the emulator
• Compile and link the emulator