By Oleg Nenashev, CloudBees, Inc. This talk will address Jenkins-based continuous integration (CI) in the area of embedded systems, which include both hardware and software components. An overview of common automation cases, challenges and their solutions based on Jenkins CI services will be presented. The specifics of Jenkins usage in the hardware area (available plugins and workarounds, environment and desired high availability features) will also be discussed. The session will cover several automation examples and case studies.

1. Jenkins World Tour 2015
London, UK 23-24 June

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Jenkins-based CI for heterogeneous
Hardware/Software projects
Oleg Nenashev
Jenkins Developer @ CloudBees
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> whoami
• https://ru.linkedin.com/in/onenashev
• Background: ~10 years of…
– R&D: HW and Embedded systems
– CI in HW, Embedded and EDA areas
– Department-wide CI frameworks
• Current:
– Jenkins CI contributor
– Jenkins Developer at CloudBees
– PhD student, EDA Lab @ SPBPU
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> whoami --list jenkins
• >6 years of Hudson/Jenkins experience
• 3 years of open-source contribution to Jenkins
• Maintenance of large-scale installations
• I maintain about 10 open-source plugins
• Contributions to other Jenkins stuff and INFRA
• Ownership
• Job Restrictions
• Role Strategy (legacy)
• Custom Tools (legacy)
• Extra Tool Installers
• Cygwin Process Killer
Tool belts Ownership-based security

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Outline
• CI in HW/Embedded world. Why Jenkins?
• Integrating Jenkins with the common stuff
– EDA tools, FPGA farms, Computing Grids
• Several examples and case studies
• Getting added value from CloudBees Jenkins
Platform
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Jenkins users from HW world
• The most of HW companies have Jenkins instances
• Examples from a 5min search in public materials
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Related talks / articles
• Robert Martin, “Multi-Stage-CI with Jenkins in an Embedded
World” @ JUC2014/Berlin
• Martin d’Anjou, “FPGA Continuous Integration with Jenkins”
@SNUG2013/Canada
• Alan Fitch, “Continuous Integration for FPGA Design and
Verification” @ Verification Futures, 2015
• JL Gray, Gordon McGregor, “A 30 Minute Project Makeover
Using Continuous Integration” @ DVCon, 2012
• …
• Sarah Woodall, “The Famous Cows of Cambridge: A Non-
Standard Use Case for Jenkins” @JUC2015/London

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INTRODUCTION
CI in HW/Embedded world
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What is a hardware product?
. . .
Not so obvious…
• IP Libraries –
reusable blocks
• Prototypes
• Development kits
• …

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HW Development Flow
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Synthesis
Place & Route
RTL Design
Specification
= Compilation
= Linking
Design
= Coding
VHDL
Verilog / SystemVerilog
SystemC…
Verification
Packaging

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Get sources
SCMs
Binary repositories
Build artifacts
Setup environment
“Build” = S&P&R
“Test”
“Analyze”
Publish reports
Deploy artifacts
Static analysis
Formal verification
Timing analysis
Specialized tools
Unit tests
Integration tests
EDA Tools
Electronic
Design
Automation
Test results
Coverages
System resources utilization
Much
parallel
tasks in
flows

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Embedded SW build process
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Other
software
Embedded
Software
• Different tools, but the approaches are similar
• Verification is a real challenge

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And what about an HW IP Product?
Hardware
part
External IP
Firmware /
Embedded
SW
External
SW
Development
tools / EDAs
Demo SW
Demo hardware
Developer kits
Yes, we
need to
automate
everything
“Main product”

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Welcome to CI hell!
• Almost everything needs to be automated
• Multiple technologies and tools
• Unstable hardware & networks
• Legacy stuff is everywhere
• HW engineers are not SW experts
• …
• Limited resources
• Limited OSS usage and contribution options

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Why Jenkins?
• It’s a framework => you can do everything
• It’s open-source:
– You can customize Jenkins core and plugins
– Plenty of available materials and examples
• “Stable” LTS versions
• Commercial support for self-hosted installations

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AREA SPECIFICS
• EDA Software
• Computing grids
• FPGAs
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EDA Software
• Almost no OSS plugins
– Exception - Cadence vManager Plugin
• Specifics:
– Dozens of tools in a common design flow
– Different platform requirements
– Multiple tool versions are required
– Big size of tools – up to 100 Gigabytes
– Limited licenses being shared with externals
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EDA Software. Possible solution
• Store tools on shared folders
– On Windows services kohsuke/winsw/pull/71 may be used
– Extra Tool Installers Plugin provide a stub installer
• Access tools: Labels + Custom Tools Plugin
• Idea of the plugin:
– Configurable installers
– Setup of a custom environment (PATH, env. vars)
– Built-in versioning based on Extended Choice Parameter
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Custom Tools. Global Configuration
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Can be stored remotely =>
automatic tool deployment
Node and global env. vars are supported

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Custom Tools. Job Configuration
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Allow
versioning
Automatic
installation

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Custom Tools. Usage
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In build steps:
In build launch dialog:

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EDA Software. Publishers
• Jenkins has publishers for many SW dev. tools
– Unit test results (xUnit et all.)
– Performance test results
– Coverages
• No solutions for hardware, but you can use converters
• Example for VCS coverages:
1. Get an HTML or raw XML report
2. Use XSLT to convert it to Cobertura format
3. Publish data using a standard plugin
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EDA Software. Licenses
• FLEX License Manager is everywhere in EDA
• Main problem: shared usage of licenses
– No sporadic prioritization in FLEX => long waiting
– Dedicated licenses are not cost-effective
– Limited availability of tools => custom accounts
• Minimal solution – Throttling, custom “wait for a
license” scripts
• Best solution - FLEX LM plugin, no OSS ones
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Hardware testing
• Simulators – specialized EDA tools
• Hardware – FPGAs, ASIC prototypes
• Combined solutions (HW Accelerators, etc.)
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Cloudless skies
• Simulation tests require…
• Public/private clouds are not cost-effective
• HW Companies mostly use computing grids
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Thousands
CPU hours
Terabytes of
TMP files
and reports
All RAM
you have

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Computing grids
Examples:
• Sun Grid Engine (SGE, UGE)
• Platform Load Sharing Facility (LSF)
• NetBatch @ Intel
• …
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• Datacenter-wide grids
• Sharing across
departments
“We run hello-world in 2 hours”

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Computing Grids Usage
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Manage tasks from
CLI (script steps)
“Transparent” –
launch Jenkins nodes
on the grid
• Use-case: Legacy scripts
• Difficult management (job
abort, status polling, etc.)
• Manual launch
• “Start by script on Master”
• LSF Cloud Plugin
• No FOSS plugins for
other grids L
“Launch task” build &
workflow steps
• No FOSS plugins !

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Simulations are slow, so…
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• S - EZ1CUSB @ http://www.easyfpga.com
• M - http://www.xilinx.com/univ/xupv5-lx110t.htm
• L - HAPS-64, www.synopsys.com
S - x00$
M – x000$
L –x0000$
FPGA accelerators &
prototyping boards

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And XXL…
• http://blogs.synopsys.com/
breakingthethreelaws/2014/04/
the-secret-ninja-fu-for-higher-
performance-prototype-
operation/
HAPS S96
Guess the price…
Could CI have
its own stuff?
Your CPU
prototype
is here

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Mapping CI to existing HW
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Nodes @ Site A Nodes @ Site CNodes @ Site B
“We borrowed FPGAs
here, somebody takes
them randomly”
“This stuff has
Windows drivers only”
“No infra team
members here”
“We run nodes on
dev. laptops”
Frankenboards
“We built it from the
garbage we had”
Infrastructure after
the “budget
optimization”
L
L
L
L
L

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How it works
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Power
When it hangs
“Deploy bit-files”
Blasting cables
Debugging cables,
firmware upload
We don’t
change
them, huh?
Jenkins
node
drivers
tools
peripherals
Attached hardware
runtime

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How do I implement jobs?
• Throttling of builds
• Shared functionality is decoupled to external project
(Parameterized Trigger or Template Project)
– FPGA blasting
– Firmware Upload
– Run of a test case (binary upload) using a debugger provided
by the toolchain (gdb, etc.)
– etc.
• Failover and restart on infra issues => Naginator
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Throttling of FPGA jobs
• Throttle Concurrent Builds Plugin
– Jobs can be throttled by a category
– Performance issues (esp. till 1.609.1), can be partially solved
by Label Throttle plugin (CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise)
– Job developers must follow rules, no enforcement
Global configuration:
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Throttling of FPGA jobs
Job configuration:
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FPGAs monitoring
• Impossible to use an external system – shared resources
• Solution in Jenkins:
1. Use periodic Multi-configuration Matrix Job for a monitoring
2. Use Elastic Axis to generate label axes by an expression
3. Run a spot-check on FPGA with blasting and a firmware test
4. If it fails, disable the node using System Groovy Script
5. Send notifications to INFRA admins
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ENTERPRISE FEATURES
Getting added value from CloudBees Jenkins Platform
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CJE – CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise
CJOC – CloudBees Jenkins Operations Center

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Common features All common features are
applicable, out of the scope
See CloudBees Docs

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Templates!
• OSS Plugins have a limited functionality:
– Template Project, Inheritance Plugin, Job Generator, etc.
• Parameterized trigger causes UI overheads
– Multi-page configuration in UI: “Trigger with several
parameters => wait => copy artifacts => analyze”
• Templates allow to save much time on the
implementations
• Workflow + Scriptler Plugin are tasty as well
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Easy failover implementation
• Workflow allows to transparently re-run
unreliable stages on other nodes. for (def board : boards) {
try {
// blasting
…
// run test
…
// test finished
break;
} catch (FPGAError error) {
// try another board
continue;
}
}
System failure
Node #1 Node #2. . .
. . .

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Shared slaves for rare hardware
• Use-case: multiple Jenkins instances in a single org
• Instances may require a specific resource
• No cross-Jenkins throttling features
• Out-of-the-box throttling in CJOC shared slaves
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Durable tasks
• Endurance tests may take weeks
• Jenkins slaves may be disconnected, masters can
be restarted for maintenance purposes
• No stable solutions in Jenkins OSS if you don’t use
computing grids
• Durable tasks allow to overcome the issue in many
cases
– Shell scripts are running independently
– Jenkins polls for a completion asynchronously
– Serious limitation: cross-site installations
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Summary
• Jenkins is not only about software
• Jenkins can be used to run CI in
hardware projects
• You can use Jenkins even without
domain-specific plugins
• CJE/CJOC features greatly help to
decrease the maintenance cost
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My HW-related wish-list
• Sun Grid Engine Cloud plugin
• FLEX LM plugin
• Flexible Windows Services
• Plugins for common EDA tools and report formats
– Build steps are OK => just use CLI utilities
– Publishing requires much efforts
– Logs parsing would be a killer feature
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Q&A