oneAPI Board Support Package for Agilex 7 M-Series FPGA

[Denisa]

Hello, 

I have recently purchased an Intel Agilex 7 M-series FPGA for a university research project the Embedded Systems Lab  (EPFL, Switzerland) and I am seeking technical support to program with it oneAPI DPC++/C++. 

I don't have any experience building a Board Support Package (BSP). Is there a recipe or prebuild BSP for this FPGA to program it with oneAPI? Upon receiving the board, I performed basic tests using the Board Test System (BTS) to verify its overall functionality. However, I am unable to use some of the more advanced features of the board, which are the primary reasons for our purchase. Any help on how to use HBM2e and CXL capabilities with the oneAPI workflow  would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

Denisa

[whitepau]

Which board do you have? our website lists some specific boards that have a path to generate a BSP using our board vendor tools (OFS) and a list of vendor boards that have vendor-supported BSPs.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/tools/oneapi/fpga.html#choose-platform

[Denisa]

Dear Whitepeau, 

Thank you for the resource, unfortunately, these BSPs are for the Agilex 7 I-Series and F-Series Dev Kits. I have an Agilex 7 M-Series Development Kit - HBM2e Edition (3x F-Tile & 1x R-Tile): https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/details/fpga/development-kits/agilex/agm039.html. Concretely, I purchased the one from Mouser. 

Would any of these BSPs give me support to use all the resources of my Agilex 7 M-Series? If not, who can help me generate a BSP for this FPGA?

Regards, 

Denisa

[whitepau]

Hello Denisa,

I am afraid that there is no BSP for the kit you have, I expect we chose not to build a BSP for it because it has no PCIe connector (although the product page mentions PCIe connectivity is possible with an expansion board). oneAPI FPGA acceleration assumes a PCIe card (e.g. on of the devkits listed on our landing page, or a partner board listed in this document on our landing page).

Instead of building a full oneAPI BSP, you can also use the oneAPI DPC++/C++ compiler to create IP that you can integrate using a platform designer system. We demonstrate this in the Platform Designer code sample, and the Nios V reference design. You can learn more about IP interface customization by studying the HLS Flow Interfaces code samples as well.

Manually integrating your IP with Platform Designer (or SystemVerilog/VHDL if you are so inclined)  gives you the ability to accelerate the embedded HPS, so you are not tied to an x86-64 host CPU.

Did you engage with an Intel/Altera salesperson to get that board? If you are interested in accelerating an x86-64 host system, you should reach out to them and see if they can help you get ahold of a partner board so you can avoid building a BSP and manually integrating a system.

[Denisa]

Dear Whitepau, 

Thank you very much for the detailed response. For my research project, having a standalone, host-independent solution is desirable, so I would use the Platform Designer  and Nios V reference design flow for a final solution deployment or demonstrator.

However,  the deployment/programming flow seems very cumbersome for design space exploration and rapid prototyping. I am searching for a way to connect the Agilex 7 M-series Dev Kit by PCIe to a x86-64 host system featuring  2x Intel Xeon Gold 6416H and 4 PCIe 5.0 slots. 

My FPGA has 2x MCIO connectors with PCIe 5 support.  In theory, I should be able to connect FPGA with 2 MCIO cables to a MCIO-PCIe Gen5 adapter that is connected to the host.  Is there a recommended set of MCIO cables and MCIO-PCIe adapters that have been tested and with Agilex 7 M-series dev kit? I found this MCIO-PCIe adapter together with two MCIO SFF-TA-1016 8i cables, but I could find no cross-reference to supported hosts and FPGA devices. Could you point me to someone who can help me with choosing the right components for the setup?

Assuming I manage to connect the Agilex 7 M-series Dev Kit by PCIe to a x86-64 host, can you point me to someone who can help building a oneAPI compatible BSP?  

Thank you for your help, 

Denisa

[whitepau]

Hi Denisa,

thanks for the reply.

If your final deployment will be managed by a Nios® V softcore processor or even ARM Hardened processor system (HPS), then I would not recommend you to try and build a custom BSP, as that is its own complicated deployment flow (If I haven't dissuaded you, there is further documentation available in our OFS user guide)

The board user guide suggests the following cable for PCIe connection:

Amphenol Part Number HMC74-0631

@BoonBengT_Intel do you have any recommendations for connecting the Agilex 7 M-Series Development Kit - HBM2e Edition (3x F-Tile & 1x R-Tile) to a PCIe slot on a host PC?

[BoonBengT_Intel]

Hi @Denisa,

I believe you have managed to found the clarification on PCie5 cable and adapters support in a separate post with your relevant support specialist. (https://community.intel.com/t5/FPGA-SoC-And-CPLD-Boards-And/MCIO-to-PCIe-Host-Adapter-for-Agilex-7-M-series-Dev-Kit/m-p/1634702#M28126)

Please do let us know if there is further clarification on regards to this post.

Hope your doubts has been clarify.

Best Wishes

BB

[Denisa]

Hello, 

Thank you for your replies. Do you think that the setup I envision is impossible? Should I consider returning the board or asking for a replacement with an Agilex I series dev kit? The setup will be used in research, and we will spend most of the time doing prototyping of many different HPC kernels that will stream compute at the max data transfer rate we can get (up to 1TB/s). The final deployment on a standalone FPGA board only serves as a demonstrator for an energy efficient solution that does not require keeping a server like host idle most of the time. 

It is important for to have a PCIe connection setup for prototyping and validating the FPGA accelerators with a host execution and  to having an oneAPI BSP seems (at least in theory) the way to approach this. 

Assuming this is not a dead end:

• I will have a look at the OSF guide for the Agilex 7 I series del kit, as it seems the most similar standalone fpga to the Agilex 7 M series. 
• I will still need advice about how to connect FPGA to the host though PCIe. Regarding the thread about the MCIO cables (https://community.intel.com/t5/FPGA-SoC-And-CPLD-Boards-And/MCIO-to-PCIe-Host-Adapter-for-Agilex-7-M-series-Dev-Kit/m-p/1634702#M28126), it only answered half of the question, about the MCIO Amphenol cable P/N: HMC74-1492, that are likely to work with the Agilex 7 M-series for PCIe5 because it was tested  with an I-series. Do you have any suggestion for the adapter  MCIO-PCIe adapter?   

Thank you, 

Denisa

[whitepau]

Porting a BSP can be tricky, but is not impossible.

If your goal is to build PCIe-based offload accelerators for x86 hosts, then I recommend you choose a card that includes a board support package (BSP), as designing and testing a BSP can be time-consuming and is, admittedly, not very well documented. 

If you want the quickest setup time, I recommend choosing a partner board as these include vendor-supplied BSPs already: https://cdrdv2.intel.com/v1/dl/getContent/824530

Note: from that list, only the Bittware IA-840f and IA-780i cards will be supported in the upcoming 2025.0 release of oneAPI, as the other BSPs depend on versions of Quartus® Prime that will be unsupported by oneAPI 2025.0.

If you want to modify the BSP yourself, you may choose one of the developer kits listed on our homepage, but I do not believe those BSPs are very well tested. Unless you are comfortable debugging a BSP yourself, I suggest you choose one of the Bittware cards I mentioned above.

[BoonBengT_Intel]

Hi @Denisa,

Greetings, do let us know if there is any further doubts in regards to this matter that we can help with.

Hope clarity has been provided.

Best Wishes

BB

[BoonBengT_Intel]

Hi @Denisa,

Greetings, as we do not receive any further clarification/updates on the matter, hence would assume challenge are overcome. Please login to ‘https://supporttickets.intel.com’, view details of the desire request, and post a feed/response within the next 15 days to allow me to continue to support you. After 15 days, this thread will be transitioned to community support. For new queries, please feel free to open a new thread and we will be right with you. Pleasure having you here.

Best Wishes

BB