Command Line Interface (deprecated)

The command line interface to hls4ml has been deprecated. Users are advised to use the python API. This page documents all the commands that hls4ml supports as a reference for those that have not migrated.

Overview

To start you can just type in hls4ml -h or hls4ml --help in your command line, a message will show up like below:

usage: hls4ml [-h] [--version] {config,convert,build,report} ...

HLS4ML - Machine learning inference in FPGAs

positional arguments:
  {config,convert,build,report}
    config              Create a conversion configuration file
    convert             Convert Keras or ONNX model to HLS
    build               Build generated HLS project
    report              Show synthesis report of an HLS project

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --version             show program's version number and exit

To get help about any particular command, you can just do:

hls4ml command -h

For example, to get help about the config command, you can just type the followings:

hls4ml config -h

hls4ml config

hls4ml config [-h] [-m MODEL] [-w WEIGHTS] [-o OUTPUT]

This creates a conversion configuration file. Visit Configuration section of the Setup page for more details on how to write a configuration file.

Arguments

-h, --help: show help message and exit
-m MODEL, or --model MODEL: model file to convert (we currently support Keras’s .h5 or .json file, ONNX’s .onnx, Tensorflow’s pb, Pytorch’s pt)
-w WEIGHT, or --weights WEIGHTS: optional weights file (if Keras’s .json file is provided))
-o OUTPUT, or --output OUTPUT: output file name

hls4ml convert

hls4ml convert [-h] [-c CONFIG]

Suppose you have a configuration file called keras-config.yml. You can use this command with the configuration file like the following:

hls4ml convert -c keras-config.yml

Arguments

-h, --help: show help message and exit
-c CONFIG, or --config CONFIG: configuration file

hls4ml build

hls4ml build [-h] [-p PROJECT] [-c] [-s] [-r] [-v] [-e] [-l] [-a] [--reset]

Build your HLS project. Suppose that you have a project directory called my-hls-test, you can often do the following to build the whole project with all the steps described in the arguments section:

hls4ml build -p my-hls-test -a

Arguments

-h, --help: show help message and exit.
-p PROJECT, or --project PROJECT: project directory.
-c, --csimulation: run C simulation.
-s, --synthesis: run C/RTL synthesis
-r, --co-simulation: run C/RTL co-simulation.
-v, --validation: run C/RTL validation.
-e, --export: export IP (implies -s)
-l, --vivado_synthesis: run Vivado synthesis (implies -s).
-a, --all: run C simulation, C/RTL synthesis, C/RTL co-simulation and Vivado synthesis.
--reset: remove any previous builds

hls4ml report

hls4ml report [-h] [-p PROJECT] [-f]

Suppose that you have a project directory called my-hls-test, you can get the full report about the project by doing the following:

hls4ml report my-hls-test -f

Arguments

-h, --help: show help message and exit.
-p PROJECT, or --project PROJECT: project directory.
-f, --full: show full report