NDK-FPGA

This repository contains FPGA part of the Network Development Kit (NDK) for FPGA acceleration cards. The NDK allows users to quickly and easily develop FPGA-accelerated network applications. The NDK is optimized for high throughput and scalability to support up to 400 Gigabit Ethernet. The NDK-based Minimal (reference) application is also included in this (NDK-FPGA) repository.

The NDK-based Minimal application is a simple example of how to build an FPGA application using the NDK. It can also be a starting point for your NDK-based application. The NDK-based Minimal application does not process network packets in any way; it only sends and receives them. If the DMA IP is enabled, then it forwards the network packets to the computer memory. You can find more detailed information in the NDK-FPGA documentation (devel branch) here.

The DMA Medusa IP is not part of the open-source NDK. If the DMA IP is disabled, it is replaced by a loopback. You can get the NDK, including the DMA Medusa IP and professional support, through our partner BrnoLogic.

How to start

Before you get started, there are a few requirements that you need to have.

Requirements and supported FPGA cards

• To build the FPGA firmware, you must have installed the Intel Quartus Prime Pro 24.1 or Xilinx Vivado 2022.2 (depending on the target card), including a valid license.
• We recommend using the Questa Sim-64 2023.1_2 tool to run HDL verifications (UVM).
• Supported FPGA cards in the NDK framework available as open-source:
  • ReflexCES XpressSX AGI-FH400G card (BOARD_REV=0 is deprecated)
  • Intel Stratix 10 DX FPGA Development Kit (DK-DEV-1SDX-P)
  • Intel Agilex I-Series FPGA Development Kit (DK-DEV-AGI027RES is deprecated)
  • Silicom fb4CGg3@VU9P card (also in variant fb2CGg3@VU9P)
  • Silicom fb2CGhh@KU15P card
  • Silicom N6010 card
  • Bittware IA-420F card
  • AMD/Xilinx Alveo U200
  • AMD/Xilinx Alveo U55C
  • AMD/Xilinx Virtex UltraScale+ FPGA VCU118 Evaluation Kit
  • PRO DESIGN FALCON Stratix 10 (only EXPERIMENTAL support)
  • Terasic Mercury A2700 Accelerator Card
• Other supported FPGA cards in the NDK framework but not available as open-source:
  • Netcope NFB-200G2QL card
• To control an FPGA card with an application based on the NDK framework, you also need:
  • NDK Linux driver and SW tools

How to clone the necessary repositories

Just clone the NDK-FPGA repository from GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/CESNET/ndk-fpga.git

CESNET developers who have access to closed-source repositories can use a single command to clone the repository, including its submodules (from private GitLab):

git clone --recursive git@gitlab.liberouter.org:ndk/ndk-fpga.git

Next steps

The NDK-FPGA documentation (devel branch) in chapter "How to start" lists further steps for building the FPGA firmware, loading it into the FPGA card and also using it.

Documentation

We use a documentation system based on the Sphinx tool, which compiles complete documentation from source files in the reStructuredText format. We also use the Sphinx-vhdl for generating documentation from the VHDL code. The documentation automatically builds with each contribution to the devel/release branch and is available online here:

• NDK-FPGA documentation (release branch)
• NDK-FPGA documentation (devel branch)

How to manually build documentation

First, you need to install a few Python packages:

$ pip3 install --user GitPython
$ pip3 install --user sphinx
$ pip3 install --user sphinx-vhdl
$ pip3 install --user sphinx-rtd-theme

Then the documentation is generated simply by issuing these two commands:

$ cd doc
$ make html

The output is in the doc/build/index.html file.

Related publications

• J. Cabal, J. Sikora, Š. Friedl, M. Špinler and J. Kořenek, "FPL Demo: 400G FPGA Packet Capture Based on Network Development Kit," 2022 32nd International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL), Belfast, United Kingdom, 2022, pp. 474-474, doi: 10.1109/FPL57034.2022.00090.
• J. Kubálek, J. Cabal, M. Špinler and R. Iša, "DMA Medusa: A Vendor-Independent FPGA-Based Architecture for 400 Gbps DMA Transfers," 2021 IEEE 29th Annual International Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM), 2021, pp. 258-258, doi: 10.1109/FCCM51124.2021.00045.
• L. Kekely, J. Cabal, V. Puš and J. Kořenek, "Multi Buses: Theory and Practical Considerations of Data Bus Width Scaling in FPGAs," 2020 23rd Euromicro Conference on Digital System Design (DSD), 2020, pp. 49-56, doi: 10.1109/DSD51259.2020.00020.

License

Unless otherwise noted, the content of this repository is available under the BSD 3-Clause License. Please read LICENSE file.

• See also the license information (in README.md) in each Git submodule.

Modules/files taken from other sources

• I2C Master controller by Richard Herveille from opencores.org in comp/ctrls/i2c_hw under something like a BSD license.
• SPI Master controller by Jonny Doin from opencores.org in comp/ctrls/spi under LGPL license.
• The .ip files located in the /comp/base/misc/adc_sensors/ folder were generated in Intel Quartus Prime Pro, and their use may be subject to additional license agreements.
• The .ip file comp/ctrls/sdm_client/mailbox_client.ip was generated in Intel Quartus Prime Pro, and their use may be subject to additional license agreements.
• The .ip files located in the cards/<VENDOR>/<CARD_NAME>/src/ip/ folder were generated in the Intel Quartus Prime Pro, and their use may be subject to additional license agreements.
• The .xci files located in the cards/<VENDOR>/<CARD_NAME>/src/ip/ folder were generated in the Xilinx Vivado, and their use may be subject to additional license agreements.
• The files located in the cards/silicom/n6010/src/comp/pmci/pmci_ip and cards/silicom/n6010/scripts folders were taken from the ofs-n6001 repository and are subject to the MIT license. Please read LICENSE.txt file.

Repository Maintainer

• Jakub Cabal, cabal@cesnet.cz