Nios® V/g TinyML LiteRT for Microcontroller Design

Introduction¶

Nios® V/g TinyML LiteRT Example Design Overview¶

This design demonstrates the TinyML application using LiteRT for microcontrollers software with Nios® V/g processor in Agilex™ 5 FPGA E-Series 065B Premium Development Kit.
The design is built with basic peripherals required for simple application execution: - JTAG UART for serial output.

Prerequisites¶

Agilex™ 5 FPGA E-Series 065B Premium Development Kit, ordering code DK- A5E065BB32AES1.
Refer to the board documentation for more information about the development kit.
Mini and Micro USB Cable. Included with the development kit.
Host PC with 64 GB of RAM. Less will be fine for only exercising the prebuilt binaries, and not rebuilding the design.
Quartus® Prime Pro Edition Software version 25.3
Ashling* RiscFree* IDE for Altera® FPGAs

Release Contents¶

Every Nios V processor design example is maintained based on this folder structure.
Here is the Github link to root directory of this design example: Nios® V/g TinyML LiteRT Example Design Github link

---
title: Release Contents File Structure
config:
  flowchart:
    curve: linear
---

graph LR
    A[tinyml_liteRT] --> B[docs]
    A --> C[img]
    A --> D[ready_to_test]
    A --> E[sources]
    B -->|contains| F{{Design Example MD file}}
    C -->|contains| G{{Figures or Illustrations}}
    D -->|contains| H{{Prebuilt Binary Files}}
    E --> I[hw]
    E --> J[scripts]
    E --> K[sw]
    I -->|contains| M{{Custom Hardware Design Files}}
    J -->|contains| N{{Scripts to Generate Hardware Design}}
    K -->|contains| P{{Custom Software Source Code}}

Nios® V/g TinyML LiteRT Design Architecture¶

This example design includes a Nios® V/g processor connected to the On-Chip RAM II, JTAG UART IP and System ID peripheral core.
The objective of the design is to accomplish data transfer between the processor and soft IP peripherals: - Running TinyML application that identify Modified National Institute of Standards and Technology (MNIST) data samples. - Prints the classification result thru JTAG UART IP.

---
title: Design Block Diagram
config:
  flowchart:
    curve: linear
---

flowchart LR
subgraph top-level-subsystem
    Z[Clock Source]
    Y[Reset Source]
subgraph processor-subsystem
    A[Nios V/g Processor]
    A <--> B(Bus Interface : AXI / AvMM Interface)
    B <--> C[On-Chip RAM II]
    B <--> D[JTAG UART]
    B ---> F[System ID]
end
end
Z --> processor-subsystem
Y --> processor-subsystem

Nios® V/g Processor IP¶

General-purpose 32-bit CPU for high performance applications with larger logic area utilization.
Implements RV32IMZicsr_Zicbom instruction set (optionally with “F” and "Smclic" extension) instruction set.
Supports five-stages pipelined datapath.
It is a customizable soft-core processor, that can be tailored to meet specific application requirements, providing flexibility and scalability in embedded system designs.

Embedded Peripheral IP Cores¶

The following embedded peripheral IPs are used in this design: - On-Chip RAM II IP - JTAG UART IP - System ID IP

System Components¶

The following components are used in this design: - Clock Source (Clock Bridge with IO PLL) - Reset Source (Reset Release IP)

Nios® V Processor Address Map Details¶

Address Offset	Size (Bytes)	Peripheral	Description
0x0000_0000	3MB	On-Chip RAM	To store application
0x0041_0040	8	JTAG UART	Communication between a host PC and the Nios V processor system
0x0041_0048	8	System ID	Hardware configuration system ID (0x9)

Development Kit Setup¶

Refer to Agilex™ 5 FPGA Premium Development Kit User Guide to setup the development kit.

Exercising Prebuilt Binaries¶

Program Hardware Binary SOF¶

Connect the development kit to the host PC using USB Blaster II.
Change the JTAG clock frequency to 6 MHz, and probe the JTAGServer to get the JTAG scan chain.

jtagconfig --setparam 1 JtagClock 6M
jtagconfig -d

For example:

 1) Agilex 5E065B Premium DK
  4BA06477   ARM_CORESIGHT_SOC_600 (IR=4)
  0364F0DD   A5E(C065BB32AR0|D065BB32AR0) (IR=10)
  020D10DD   VTAP10 (IR=10)
    Design hash    2696B57EB10A539DFB3F
    + Node 08586E00  (110:11) #0
    + Node 0C006E00  JTAG UART #0
    + Node 0C206E00  JTAG PHY #0
    + Node 19104600  Nios II #0
    + Node 30006E00  Signal Tap #0

  Captured DR after reset = (4BA064770364F0DD020D10DD) [96]
  Captured IR after reset = (100555) [24]
  Captured Bypass after reset = (0) [3]
  Captured Bypass chain = (0) [3]
  JTAG clock speed auto-adjustment is enabled. To disable, set JtagClockAutoAdjust parameter to 0
  JTAG clock speed 6 MHz

Execute the following command to program the SOF file with the correct device number.
Based on the JTAG scan chain earlier, the FPGA is at device number 2. You may require to provide a different device number if your JTAG chain is different from the given example.

quartus_pgm --cable=1 -m jtag -o 'p;ready_to_test/top.sof@2'

Program Software Image ELF¶

Ensure that the development kit is successfully configured with the Hardware Binary SOF file.
Launch the Nios V Command Shell. You may skip this if the shell is active.
Execute the following command to download the ELF file.

niosv-shell
niosv-download -g ready_to_test/tflite_app.elf -c 1

Run Serial Console¶

You may proceed to to display the application printouts, and verify the design.

juart-terminal -d 1 -c 1 -i 0

For example, you should see similar display at the start of the application.

Rebuilding the Design¶

Generate Hardware Binary SOF¶

Run the following command in the terminal from the source directory.
The script performs the following tasks, which generates the hardware binary SOF file of this design.

Create a new project
Create a new Platform Designer system
Configure assignments and constraints
Compile the project
Generate a hardware binary SOF file

quartus_py ./scripts/build_sof.py

Generate Software Image ELF¶

After the hardware binary SOF file is ready, you may begin building the software design.
It consists of the following steps: 1. Create a board support package (BSP) project. 2. Create a Nios® V processor application project with TinyML source codes. 3. Build the TinyML application. 4. Generate a software image ELF file.

Launch the Nios V Command Shell. You may skip this if the shell is active.
Run the following command in the shell from the source directory.

niosv-shell

niosv-bsp -c --quartus-project=hw/top.qpf --qsys=hw/qsys_top.qsys --type=hal --script=sw/bsp_script.tcl sw/tflite_bsp/settings.bsp

niosv-app --bsp-dir=sw/tflite_bsp --app-dir=sw/tflite_app --srcs-recursive=sw/tflite_app/image_classification,sw/tflite_app/signal,sw/tflite_app/tensorflow --incs=sw/tflite_app,sw/tflite_app/image_classification/model,sw/tflite_app/image_classification/image,sw/tflite_app/tensorflow,sw/tflite_app/third_party/flatbuffers/include,sw/tflite_app/third_party/gemmlowp,sw/tflite_app/third_party/kissfft,sw/tflite_app/third_party/ruy

cmake -S ./sw/tflite_app -B sw/tflite_app/build/Release -G "Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

make -C sw/tflite_app/build/Release