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VerCoLib: Fast and Versatile Communication for FPGAs via PCI Express

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Abstract

PCI Express plays a vital role in including FPGA accelerators into high-performance computing systems. This also includes direct communication between multiple FPGAs, without any involvement of the main memory of the host. We present a highly configurable hardware interface that supports DMA-based connections to a host system as well as direct communication between multiple FPGAs. Our implementation offers unidirectional channels to connect FPGAs, allowing for precise adaptation to all kinds of use cases. Multiple channels to the same endpoint can be used to realise independent data transmissions. While the main focus of this work is flexibility, we are able to show maximum throughput for connections between two FPGAs and up to 92% of the available bandwidth for connections between the FPGA and the host system.

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Notes

  1. https://github.com/TI-Bonn/vercolib_pcie

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Intstitute of Computer Science VI, Technische Informatik, University of Bonn, Endenicher Allee 19 A, 53115, Bonn, Germany

      Oğuzhan Sezenlik, Sebastian Schüller & Joachim K. Anlauf

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    1. Oğuzhan Sezenlik
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    2. Sebastian Schüller
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    3. Joachim K. Anlauf
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    Correspondence to Oğuzhan Sezenlik.

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    Oğuzhan Sezenlik and Sebastian Schüller contributed equally to this work.

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    Sezenlik, O., Schüller, S. & Anlauf, J.K. VerCoLib: Fast and Versatile Communication for FPGAs via PCI Express. J Sign Process Syst 92, 1177–1186 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-019-01465-6

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11265-019-01465-6

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