Mitrion SDK Release Notes

Changes in Mitrion SDK 2.0.1

Platform Support

Changes in Mitrion SDK 2.0.0

Major Feature Additions

Simulator GUI now reports FPGA resource usage for each node.
New simulator graph visualizes performance and behavior of the Mitrion-C program after optimizations.
New Mitrion SPR tool manages synthesis and place & route process on most platforms.
Processor configuration unit refactored for improvements to stability, deadlock detection and FPGA resource utilization.

Language

Mitrion-C language updated to version 2.0.
Streams are now allowed in vectors.
The 'by' index can now be used in for loops.
Predicated return can now be used in for and while loops.
Multi-dimensional streams can now be partially flattened, i.e. a 4-dimensional stream can be flattened to a 3,2 or 1 dimensional stream using reshape(). Previously multi-dimensional streams could only be completely flattened to a 1-dimensional stream.
Operators '/<','</','><' and 'mix()' are now supported for all collection types (list,stream,vector). For lists and vectors multidimensional collections are handled, for streams only the 1-dimensional case is handled. Previously '/<','</' and '><' were only allowed on list and vector, and 'mix()' was only allowed on streams. '/<' and '</' on streams can use a non-constant take/drop amount.
New type attribute functions: maxval(type)/minval(type). Returns the max/min value a type can hold.
The bit-width of the results from integer addition has increased:
uint:X + int:Y => int:max(X+1,Y)+1
int:X + uint:Y => int:max(X:Y+1)+1
Use a cast operation to emulate the old behavior.
Fixed a bug where a vector index could be of the 'bits' type.
In Mitrion-C 2.0 and later, a vector index must be 'int' or 'uint'.
Other minor additions.

Compiler

The resource usage of the drop-first operator on lists has been made constant. Previously the operator consumed FPGA RAM proportional to the size of the list.
Line numbers now reported for all errors.
Compiler much faster on large Mitrion-C programs.
Arbitrary size multiplications now supported.
Optimization for common subexpression elimination added.
Less memory usage during compilation.
Fixed a bug where tuples could not have more than 10 elements.
Other minor enhancements and bug fixes.

Simulator

Vectors in GUI are split up into one edge per vector component to give a simulation behaviour closer to the actual MVP behaviour.
Popups for nodes in the GUI showing location in source code and hardware resource usage.
Considerable speedups to clock-cycle correct simulation.
Much reduced memory footprint during simulation.
Added possibility to set random seed for simulation.
New "Run Multiple Steps..." dialog enables the simulator to perform a pre-defined number of steps.
The simulator can now be used with the '-platform' option to check the validity of the Mitrion-C program for a given platform.

Mithal

Added support for strems.
Mithal can now be used with the RASC streaming direct memory access feature on SGI RASC RC100.
Improved error handling for simulation.
'mitrion_fpga_load_processor()' now returns error code if the Mitrion-C program does not compile. Previously the host program would hang.

Processor Configuration Unit

Added support for input from third-party compilers.
Fixed bug where resource usage was not printed when the MVP was too large. Now resource usage is always printed.

Platform Support

Documentation

Added section to 'Mitrion Users' Guide' describing common cases leading to deadlocks in the MVP.
New 'Creating VHDL IP-Block Plug-ins' document allows the creation of external functions in VHDL that can be called from Mitrion-C.
New AES encryption example application

Miscellaneous

SUN Java Runtime Environment 1.6 is now supported.
SUN Java Runtime Environment 1.4 is no longer supported.
RC100 option "-keep-watches" removed.
When installing using the tar archive, the directory editor-extras is now copied to the installation directory as expected.
Parcheck utility removed and replaced by new Mitrion SPR tool functionality.

More info about Mitrionics at http://www.mitrionics.com.