Host Memory Simple

This is simple host memory example to describe how a user kernel can access the host memory. The host memory allocation is done through the host code. The kernel reads data from host memory and writes result to host memory.

KEY CONCEPTS: host memory, address translation unit

KEYWORDS: XCL_MEM_EXT_HOST_ONLY, HOST[0]

Host Memory IP is used by the kernels to read and write data directly from/to the Host Memory. Unlike the XDMA data transfer, this data transfer mechanism does not utlize global memories (DDR, HBM, PLRAM ,etc) on the card. Host-memory provides DMA bypass capability that is primarily used for data transfer on a No-DMA platform.

Kernel Compilation

Use the following V++ configuration option to connect a kernel AXI-Master Port to Host-memory IP.

[connectivity]
sp=krnl_vadd_1.m_axi_gmem:HOST[0]

Host code Guidelines

XRT OpenCL introduces a new buffer extension Flag XCL_MEM_EXT_HOST_ONLY that should be used to denote a Host-only buffer

cl_mem_ext_ptr_t host_buffer_ext;
host_buffer_ext.flags = XCL_MEM_EXT_HOST_ONLY;
host_buffer_ext.obj = nullptr;
host_buffer_ext.param = 0;

OCL_CHECK(err, cl::Buffer buffer_in_a(context, CL_MEM_READ_ONLY |
                                                 CL_MEM_EXT_PTR_XILINX,
                                    size_in_bytes, &host_buffer_ext, &err));

EXCLUDED PLATFORMS:

  • Alveo U25 SmartNIC

  • Alveo U30

  • Alveo U50lv

  • Alveo U50 gen3x4

  • All Embedded Zynq Platforms, i.e zc702, zcu102 etc

  • All Versal Platforms, i.e vck190 etc

  • All Platforms with 2019 Version

  • All Platforms with 2018 Version

  • Samsung SmartSSD Computation Storage Drive

  • Samsung U.2 SmartSSD

  • Versal V70

DESIGN FILES

Application code is located in the src directory. Accelerator binary files will be compiled to the xclbin directory. The xclbin directory is required by the Makefile and its contents will be filled during compilation. A listing of all the files in this example is shown below

src/host.cpp
src/kernel.cpp

Access these files in the github repo by clicking here.

COMMAND LINE ARGUMENTS

Once the environment has been configured, the application can be executed by

./host_memory_simple.exe <krnl_vadd XCLBIN>