FPGA AI Suite: IP Reference Manual

ID 768974
Date 7/31/2024
Public
Document Table of Contents

2.3. FPGA AI Suite Software Reference Model

The FPGA AI Suite includes a software model of the IP that is accessible through the OpenVINO™ plugin interface. This software reference models the numeric details of the IP, including the behavior of the block floating point numerics (when used). The results from the software reference are close to bit-accurate, but are not guaranteed to model the detailed rounding decisions of the IP in all cases.

The software reference OpenVINO™ plugins are enabled in the $COREDLA_ROOT/bin/plugins_reference.xml plugins file. Because it uses the OpenVINO™ plugin architecture, it works with both the OpenVINO™ Python API and the C++ API. For an example that shows how to use the software reference as the inference engine for the runtime dla_benchmark utility, refer to " Performing Inference Without an FPGA Board " in the FPGA AI Suite Getting Started Guide .

Because the software reference executes on the CPU and does not benefit from the FPGA acceleration, the software reference is much slower than inference on the FPGA. Typical inference times for a single image with ResNet50 are on the order of minutes of time. The inference speed varies dramatically depending on the architecture configuration and the graph.