🌿 SoftHier SDK

The SoftHier SDK is a PULP Platform software package developed by ETH Zurich and the University of Bologna as part of the PULP project.

This repository provides useful tools for programming and running software applications on SoftHier, a modeling and simulation framework for tile-based many-PE accelerators on the GVSoC event-based simulator. It is designed to be used together with a GVSoC source tree for benchmarking, debugging, and profiling software running on SoftHier architectures.

The SDK includes the SoftHier software runtime headers, startup and linker files, a default example application, configuration utilities, and Makefile integration targets for building and running SoftHier simulations.

For more background, see the PULP Platform project page and the GVSoC repository.

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🚀 Getting Started

Follow these steps to set up and run your first SoftHier simulation:

1️⃣ Set up the environment

Initialize the SoftHier SDK environment:

source sourceme.sh

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2️⃣ Integrate with GVSOC

Navigate to the root of your GVSOC repository and add the following line to your Makefile:

include $(SOFTHIER_SDK)/softhier.mk

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3️⃣ Install toolchains

Install all required third-party toolchains:

make third_party/toolchain

This target downloads and extracts the following third-party archives into third_party/toolchain:

• v1.0.16-pulp-riscv-gcc-centos-7.tar.bz2 from pulp-platform/pulp-riscv-gnu-toolchain. This is a prebuilt RISC-V GNU compiler toolchain. Its upstream license file covers multiple components, including newlib under BSD-style terms and GCC/binutils/Linux headers under GNU GPL-family terms.
• toolchain.tar.xz from husterZC/gun_toolchain release v2.0.0. This is a prebuilt GNU/RISC-V toolchain with vector and Float16 support. The upstream GitHub repository does not declare a repository-level license; review the license notices included in the downloaded archive before redistribution.

These toolchains are not part of the SoftHier SDK license grant and remain under their respective upstream licenses.

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4️⃣ Build SoftHier hardware 🛠️

make sh-hw

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5️⃣ Build SoftHier software 💻

make sh-sw

📂 The default example application is located at:

<path/to/softhier-sdk>/sw/app_example

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6️⃣ Run the simulation ▶️

make sh-run

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📜 License

Copyright ETH Zurich and University of Bologna 2026.

The SoftHier SDK is licensed under the Apache v2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for full details.