Running SystemC on new Apple M1 silicon

[William Lock]

Managed to run SystemC on new Apple M1 silicon, following are the steps 

1. modify configure file, add the following code highlighted in red

     # check CPU architecture

     case ${target_cpu} in #(

         x86_64|amd64) :

             TARGET_ARCH="${TARGET_ARCH}64"

          CPU_ARCH="x86_64"

          QT_ARCH="x86_64" ;; #(

  x*86|i*86) :

             CPU_ARCH="i386"

          QT_ARCH="iX86" ;; #(

  powerpc64) :

             TARGET_ARCH="${TARGET_ARCH}ppc64"

          CPU_ARCH="ppc64"

          QT_ARCH="pthreads" ;; #(

  powerpc) :

             TARGET_ARCH="${TARGET_ARCH}ppc"

          CPU_ARCH="ppc"

          QT_ARCH="powerpc-apple-macosx" ;; #(

  arm) :

             TARGET_ARCH="${TARGET_ARCH}arm"

          CPU_ARCH="arm64"

          QT_ARCH="pthreads" ;;

 

          #(

  *) :

    as_fn_error $? "\"sorry...architecture not supported\"" "$LINENO" 5 ;;

2. install g++ using homebrew

brew install gcc

3. setting CXX  and point to the homebrew g++-11 in step 2, run configure

export CXX=g++-11 

./configure

4. make all

5. make check

I would like to encourage others to share their experience of porting systemC to this new mac silicon. 

[David Black]

Have you tried the cmake approach?

mkdir build; cd build; cmake ..; make; make install

 

[William Lock]

Hi David,

I did not have much luck with cmake approach.  

William 

[danciac]

Thanks William for this, worked as a charm for me. I've made similar changes to the configure for SystemC AMS and succeeded in building it too. Too bad a google search on build systemc apple m1 doesn't point to this, would have saved me some time.

[maehne]

Thanks @William Lock, for sharing your experience of building SystemC on macOS for the Apple M1 architecture. I opened an issue on the LWG’s internal tracker to update our build scripts so that it will work out of the box in the future.

[Michael Lebert]

Hi William,

When I open the configure.ac file it does not look like in your example (at least not if I open it with TextEdit on Mac)      

# check CPU architecture
     AS_CASE([${target_cpu}], dnl
       [x86_64|amd64], dnl
         [TARGET_ARCH="${TARGET_ARCH}64"
          CPU_ARCH="x86_64"
          QT_ARCH="x86_64"],
       [x*86|i*86], dnl
         [CPU_ARCH="i386"
          QT_ARCH="iX86"],
       [powerpc64], dnl
         [TARGET_ARCH="${TARGET_ARCH}ppc64"
          CPU_ARCH="ppc64"
          QT_ARCH="pthreads"],
       [powerpc], dnl
         [TARGET_ARCH="${TARGET_ARCH}ppc"
          CPU_ARCH="ppc"
          QT_ARCH="powerpc-apple-macosx"],
       [AC_MSG_ERROR("sorry...architecture not supported")])
 

So trying to translate from your example I ended up with something that looks like below

 

# check CPU architecture

     AS_CASE([${target_cpu}], dnl

       [x86_64|amd64], dnl

         [TARGET_ARCH="${TARGET_ARCH}64"

          CPU_ARCH="x86_64"

          QT_ARCH="x86_64"],

       [x*86|i*86], dnl

         [CPU_ARCH="i386"

          QT_ARCH="iX86"],

       [powerpc64], dnl

         [TARGET_ARCH="${TARGET_ARCH}ppc64"

          CPU_ARCH="ppc64"

          QT_ARCH="pthreads"],

       [powerpc], dnl

         [TARGET_ARCH="${TARGET_ARCH}ppc"

          CPU_ARCH="ppc"

          QT_ARCH="powerpc-apple-macosx"],

       [arm], dnl

         [TARGET_ARCH="${TARGET_ARCH}arm"

          CPU_ARCH="arm64"

          QT_ARCH="pthreads"],

       [AC_MSG_ERROR("sorry...architecture not supported")])

 

but hen running ./configure I always end up with "sorry...architecture not supported"....

so something I apparently do wrong but I can't understand what.

 

below what happens when I run ./configure:

michaellebert@Michaels-Mini systemc-2.3.3 % ./configure                  

checking build system type... arm-apple-darwin20.5.0

checking host system type... arm-apple-darwin20.5.0

checking target system type... arm-apple-darwin20.5.0

checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c

checking whether build environment is sane... yes

checking for a thread-safe mkdir -p... config/install-sh -c -d

checking for gawk... no

checking for mawk... no

checking for nawk... no

checking for awk... awk

checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes

checking whether make supports nested variables... yes

checking how to create a pax tar archive... gnutar

checking whether make supports nested variables... (cached) yes

checking whether the C++ compiler works... yes

checking for C++ compiler default output file name... a.out

checking for suffix of executables...

checking whether we are cross compiling... no

checking for suffix of object files... o

checking whether we are using the GNU C++ compiler... yes

checking whether g++-11 accepts -g... yes

checking for style of include used by make... GNU

checking dependency style of g++-11... gcc3

checking whether we are using a Clang/LLVM C++ compiler... no

checking for gcc... g++-11

checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes

checking whether g++-11 accepts -g... yes

checking for g++-11 option to accept ISO C89... unsupported

checking whether g++-11 understands -c and -o together... yes

checking dependency style of g++-11... gcc3

checking whether we are using a Clang/LLVM C compiler... no

checking for ar... ar

checking the archiver (ar) interface... ar

checking dependency style of g++-11... gcc3

checking whether ln -s works... yes

configure: error: "sorry...architecture not supported"

michaellebert@Michaels-Mini systemc-2.3.3 %

 

BR//Michael Lebert

 

[maehne]

You should not edit the configure file directly, but rather the file configure.ac. After that, you'll have to run the config/bootstrap to regenerate the build system. For this to work, you'll have to install GNU libtool, GNU automake, and GNU autoconf, e.g., through MacPorts.

[Canny]

Hi @William Lock and all,

 

Thanks for your instruction and I am able to build it on my macbook pro m1. However, I encounter problem with "make check" as all tests are failed. I also tried running the test in examples separately and it also failed with fault "zsh: segmentation fault  ./simple_async". Do you know anything about it?

[Canny]

I managed to fix the problem. The root cause sem_init in sc_host_semaphore is deprecated in macOS Big Sur. So use sem_open instead will fix it.

[Philipp A Hartmann]

A better solution is to compile for C++11 (or later) instead, where sem_* APIs are not required.

[William Lock]

Hi all,

@David Black during the past winter break, I managed to get cmake to work on M1. I will share CMakeLists.txt. As @Philipp A Hartmann also pointed out earlier, CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD is required to set to 11 or above.

CMakeLists.txt

[Leonidas]

Hi all,

I have followed your instructions by modifying the configure file to install systemC and make check passes all tests. However, I am somewhat of a beginner when it comes to CMake and was wondering if anyone could provide a basic CMakeLists.txt file I could use for a basic hello world program. I have tried multiple ways and I always either get a linker problem where the library is not found or a segmentation error when executing the executable.

 

Nevertheless, thank you for your amazing help on tackling this issue.

 

Best regards,

Leo

CMakeLists.txt