0. Getting Started

Prerequisites

First, make sure to download and install the following prerequisites:

• Scala SBT
• Java JDK

While it’s not at all required, it may be easier to learn to use Spatial if you’ve had experience with Scala or a similar functional programming language in the past. Knowledge of Scala will allow you to use meta-programming to assist your Spatial designs.

If you’d like, check out this Scala tutorial .

Finally, please sign up for the Spatial users google group if you have any questions.

Installation via Quickstart (Recommended)

To get started with Spatial, you simply need to clone the spatial-quickstart repo and set your environment:

$ git clone git@github.com:stanford-ppl/spatial-quickstart
$ cd spatial-quickstart
$ export SPATIAL_HOME=`pwd`

You can start writing your apps directly in spatial-lang/src/<filename>.scala. To run a quick test, you can run the following:

$ bin/spatial Quicktest
$ cd gen/Quicktest && bash run.sh 7

The app called “Quicktest” is in spatial-quicktest/src/Applications.scala. It has one input register, reads and adds 4 to it in the Accel, and then writes this to an output register.

Installation From Source

Run the following (bash) commands to clone and update the spatial-lang repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/stanford-ppl/spatial-lang.git
$ cd spatial-lang
$ git submodule update --init

This will pull Spatial’s submodules argon, apps, and scala-virtualized.

You may need to export your JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to your Java installation (usually /usr/bin)

You are now ready to compile the language. Run the following:

$ cd spatial-lang # Navigate to root of spatial-lang repository
$ sbt compile

A good habit would be to pull from these repositories often and run sbt compile in your spatial-lang directory.

To run a quick test, you can run the following:

$ bin/spatial InOutArg
$ cd gen/InOutArg && bash run.sh 7

The app called “InOutArg” is in spatial-lang/apps/src/UnitTests.scala. It has one input register, reads and adds 4 to it in the Accel, and then writes this to an output register.

That’s it! Up next, you will learn how to use the language by working through a series of examples. The concepts you will learn in these tutorials are listed below. Feel free to skip around the apps as you find convenient:

• Hello, World!

• Application skeleton (import statements, application creation, accel scope, host scope)
• ArgIn
• ArgOut
• HostIO
• DRAM
• SRAM
• Reg
• Typing system
• Data transfer between host and accel (setArg, setMem, getArg, getMem, load, store, gather, scatter)
• Basic debugging hooks
• Compiling an app

• Dot Product

• Tiling
• Reduce and Fold
• Sequential execution and Coarse-grain pipelining
• Parallelization
• Basic buffering and banking

• General Matrix Multiply (GEMM)

• MemReduce and MemFold
• Debugging with instrumentation
• Advanced banking
• Advanced buffering

• Differentiator & Sobel Filter

• LineBuffer
• ShiftRegister
• LUT
• Spatial Functions and Multifile Projects

• Needleman-Wunsch

• FSM
• Branching
• FIFO
• Systolic Arrays
• File IO and text management
• Asserts, Breakpoints, and Sleep