Simulation
=======================

Chipyard supports three classes of simulation:

#. Software RTL simulation using commercial or open-source (Verilator) RTL simulators
#. FPGA-accelerated full-system simulation using FireSim
#. FPGA prototyping on ``fpga-shells`` platforms

Software RTL simulators of Chipyard designs run at O(1 KHz), but compile
quickly and provide full waveforms. Conversely, FPGA-accelerated simulators and FPGA prototyping run
at O(100 MHz), making them appropriate for booting an operating system and
running a complete workload, but have multi-hour compile times and poorer debug
visibility. However, FPGA-accelerated simulators differ from FPGA prototyping by providing deterministic
cycle-accurate results.

Click next to see how to run a simulation.

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 2
   :caption: Simulation:

   Software-RTL-Simulation
   FPGA-Accelerated-Simulation
   FPGA-Prototyping