HailoRT ppc64le Port

June 12, 2026 · View on GitHub

BCOS Certified Port of Hailo-8 SDK (HailoRT) to IBM POWER8/POWER9 PowerPC 64-bit Little Endian architecture.

Overview

This repository contains patches and build instructions for running Hailo-8 (26 TOPS) AI accelerator on ppc64le systems like IBM POWER8 S824.

⚠️ Branch matters: Hailo-8 support lives on upstream's hailo8 branch (HailoRT 4.23.0, the terminal Hailo-8 line). Upstream master is Hailo-10/15-only and will not drive a Hailo-8. Everything here — patches, build script, instructions — targets the hailo8 branch. (Patches rebased and verified against it 2026-06-12.)

Status

ComponentStatusNotes
Kernel DriverReadyUses standard ioread32/iowrite32 (endian-safe)
HailoRT LibraryPatchedtokenizers.cmake and setup.py
Python BindingsPatchedPlatform list updated
Rust TokenizersPatchedCargo target added

Patches

  • 01-tokenizers-ppc64le.patch - Adds ppc64le/ppc64 Rust cargo targets
  • 02-python-ppc64le-platform.patch - Adds ppc64le to Python wheel platforms

Requirements

POWER8/POWER9 System

  • Ubuntu 20.04+ or RHEL 8+ on ppc64le
  • Kernel headers for driver compilation
  • CMake 3.14+
  • GCC 8+
  • Rust/Cargo (for tokenizers)

Hailo-8 Hardware

  • Hailo-8 M.2 or PCIe card
  • PCIe slot with sufficient power

Building

Apply Patches

git clone -b hailo8 https://github.com/hailo-ai/hailort.git
git clone -b hailo8 https://github.com/hailo-ai/hailort-drivers.git
cd hailort
git apply ../patches/01-tokenizers-ppc64le.patch
git apply ../patches/02-python-ppc64le-platform.patch

Or just run ./build-ppc64le.sh, which clones the correct branches, refuses to proceed on a master checkout, and applies both patches.

Build Kernel Driver

cd hailort-drivers/linux/pcie
make all
sudo make install

Build HailoRT Library

cd hailort/hailort
mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install

Build Python Bindings

cd hailort/hailort/libhailort/bindings/python/platform
pip install -e .

Architecture Notes

Endianness

The Hailo-8 is a PCIe device. The kernel driver uses Linux's ioread32/iowrite32 functions which are endian-safe for PCIe MMIO access. No endianness patches required for the driver.

SIMD

The userspace library's quantization code only uses x86 SIMD on Windows (MSVC). On Linux, it uses portable rintf(). No SIMD patches required.

Tokenizers

The tokenizers-cpp library uses Rust. We add the powerpc64le-unknown-linux-gnu target to cmake configuration.

Target Hardware (validation pending)

  • IBM Power System S824 (POWER8), Ubuntu 20.04 ppc64le, kernel 5.4
  • Hailo-8 26 TOPS M.2 accelerator via passive M.2-to-PCIe-x4 adapter

Patches are verified to apply cleanly against the hailo8 branch; the kernel-5.4 window is inside the driver's compat range (2.6.22-6.13). First hailortcli fw-control identify on the S824 is still pending — this section becomes "Tested" when it succeeds, with benchmark numbers.

POWER8 DMA / IOMMU — the expected runtime risk

The driver requests a 64-bit DMA mask first (linux/vdma/vdma.c), which on PowerNV/PHB3 maps the TCE bypass window at 1<<59. Consumer-class endpoints sometimes can't drive those high address bits even though they claim a 64-bit mask — symptoms are silent transfer failures or an EEH: Frozen PHB event in dmesg. Mitigations, in order:

  1. Try stock first; watch dmesg -w during hailortcli scan.
  2. Boot with iommu=nobypass to force translated DMA through the TCE window.
  3. One-line driver patch: start at DMA_BIT_MASK(48) on ppc64le in vdma.c — if needed, that patch is this port's upstream-worthy contribution.

If the card doesn't enumerate at boot, the oculink-gpu-bypass PCIe rescan script is the fallback.

Model Pipeline (compile on x86, run on POWER)

The Hailo Dataflow Compiler is x86_64-only — but you rarely need it: the model zoo's Hailo-8 line (v2.x) publishes pre-compiled HEFs (YOLOv8/v10/v11, classification, segmentation, pose, depth; Whisper tiny/base via hailo-whisper). Compile custom models on any x86 box and copy the .hef over; HEFs are opaque blobs with no host-arch dependency. Match zoo-2.x HEFs to HailoRT 4.2x (the hailo8 branch) — 5.x-zoo HEFs are the Hailo-10/15 line.

Credits

  • Hailo Technologies Ltd - Original HailoRT SDK
  • Scott Boudreaux / Elyan Labs - ppc64le port

License

HailoRT is MIT licensed. Patches in this repository are also MIT licensed.

References

Part of the Elyan Labs Ecosystem

  • BoTTube — AI video platform where 119+ agents create content
  • RustChain — Proof-of-Antiquity blockchain with hardware attestation
  • GitHub