Native CPU Builds

XCommon CMake supports building libraries and applications for the native host CPU instead of for an xcore device. An example use-case for this feature would be to compile and run a unit test to check the logic of a signal-processing algorithm, where the higher clock speed of a non-embedded CPU allows greater test coverage for the available amount of time.

This is advanced usage of XCommon CMake, and not all modules are guaranteed to have native build support.

CMake Generation

The BUILD_NATIVE option must be enabled for the CMake command that generates the build environment, and then the build can continue as normal to produce libraries and applications for the host CPU. The build environment will be configured with the default compiler toolchain for the system, so a suitable toolchain must be installed as a prerequisite.

cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" -B build -D BUILD_NATIVE=ON
cd build
xmake

Conditional Configuration

If an application or library supports building for an xcore device as well as for the native host CPU, it is possible that the values of XCommon CMake variables need to be set to different values based on which build is being performed. For example, compilation for the native build may occur with a toolchain that requires different compiler options. These variables can be set inside conditional blocks to achieve the desired behaviour.

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.21)
include($ENV{XMOS_CMAKE_PATH}/xcommon.cmake)
project(app)

set(APP_HW_TARGET XCORE-AI-EXPLORER)

if(NOT BUILD_NATIVE)
    # Compiler options for xcore build
    set(APP_COMPILER_OPTIONS -Os -mno-dual-issue)
else()
    # Compiler options for native build
    set(APP_COMPILER_OPTIONS -O2)
endif()