# VTA Configuration¶

The VTA stack incorporates both a hardware accelerator stack and a TVM based software stack. VTA incorporates flexibility out of the box: by modifying the vta/config/vta_config.json high-level configuration file, the user can change the shape of the tensor intrinsic, clock frequency, pipelining, data type width, and on-chip buffer sizes.

## Parameters Overview¶

We explain the parameters listed in the vta_config.json file in the table below.

Attribute Format Description
TARGET String The TVM device target.
HW_TARGET Int FPGA frequency in MHz.
HW_CLK_TARGET Int FPGA clock period in ns target for HLS tool.
HW_VER String VTA hardware version number.
LOG_INP_WIDTH Int (log2) Input data type signed integer width.
LOG_WGT_WIDTH Int (log2) Weight data type signed integer width.
LOG_ACC_WIDTH Int (log2) Accumulator data type signed integer width.
LOG_OUT_WIDTH Int (log2) Output data type signed integer width.
LOG_BATCH Int (log2) VTA matrix multiply intrinsic output dimension 0.
LOG_BLOCK_IN Int (log2) VTA matrix multiply reduction dimension.
LOG_BLOCK_OUT Int (log2) VTA matrix multiply intrinsic output dimension 1.
LOG_UOP_BUFF_SIZE Int (log2) Micro-op on-chip buffer in Bytes.
LOG_INP_BUFF_SIZE Int (log2) Input on-chip buffer in Bytes.
LOG_WGT_BUFF_SIZE Int (log2) Weight on-chip buffer in Bytes.
LOG_ACC_BUFF_SIZE Int (log2) Accumulator on-chip buffer in Bytes.

Note

When a parameter name is preceded with LOG, it means that it describes a value that can only be expressed a power of two. For that reason we describe these parameters by their log2 value. For instance, to describe an integer width of 8-bits for the input data types, we set the LOG_INP_WIDTH to be 3, which is the log2 of 8. Similarly, to descibe a 64kB micro-op buffer, we would set LOG_UOP_BUFF_SIZE to be 16.

We provide additional detail below regarding each parameter:

• TARGET: Can be set to "pynq" or "sim".
• HW_TARGET: In pynq mode, can be set to 100, 142, 167, or 200 MHz.
• HW_CLK_TARGET: The lower the target, the more pipeline stages HLS will insert to achieve timing closure during place and route (this can also slightly decrease performance).
• HW_VER: Hardware version which increments everytime the VTA hardware design changes. This parameter is used to uniquely idenfity hardware bitstreams.
• LOG_OUT_WIDTH: We recommend matching LOG_OUT_WIDTH to LOG_INP_WIDTH.
• LOG_BATCH: Equivalent to A in multiplication of shape (A, B) x (B, C), or typically, the batch dimension.
• LOG_BATCH: Equivalent to A in multiplication of shape (A, B) x (B, C), or typically, the batch dimension.
• LOG_BLOCK_IN: Equivalent to B in multiplication of shape (A, B) x (B, C), or typically, the input channel dimension.
• LOG_BLOCK_OUT: Equivalent to C in multiplication of shape (A, B) x (B, C), or typically, the output channel dimension.