Developer Guide

Intel® oneAPI DPC++/C++ Compiler Handbook for FPGAs

ID 785441
Date 6/24/2024
Public
Document Table of Contents

The FPGA Board Utility Commands

The FPGA Support Package for the Intel® oneAPI DPC++/C++ Compiler includes utility commands that you can use to manage your FPGA board.

Use these utilities for the following tasks:

  • Installing/uninstalling a BSP
  • Listing the detected FPGA boards
  • Initializing an FPGA board
  • Running FPGA board and system configuration diagnostics

FPGA Board Utility Commands

The FPGA board utility commands can be categorized as follows:

  • Board Management Utilities

    These commands get your board ready to be recognized and accessed by the oneAPI runtime, and they provide information about the boards that the runtime can detect.

  • Advanced Utilities

    These commands directly program an FPGA device or the board flash memory. You likely rarely need these commands when developing and running a typical multiarchitecture binary application.

Board Management Utilities
Command Description
aocl install Installs the BSP, including the FPGA client driver (FCD).

IMPORTANT:

Do not move BSP files to a different directory after you install it. If you want to move the installation location of BSP files:

  1. Uninstall the BSP with the aocl uninstall utility.
  2. Move the BSP files to their new location.
  3. Reinstall the BSP from the new location with the aocl install utility.

aocl list-devices Lists the board names for detected FPGA boards.

These board names are sometimes required for other FPGA utility commands.

If you have an FPGA board physically connected to your system but have not yet installed its BSP with the aocl install command, it will not be listed in the aocl list-devices command output.

aocl diagnose Provides a list of detected boards, their statuses, board descriptions, and some diagnostic information about the boards.

If you specify a board name when running the aocl diagnose command, the command runs more detailed diagnostic tests on your board. Refer to your board vendor BSP documentation for details about the information provided from these diagnostic tests.

aocl initialize Prepares the FPGA board to run the workload. You must initialize a board before you run a multiarchitecture binary application.
aocl uninstall Uninstalls the BSP for a board and removes its FCD.

Advanced Utilities
Command Description
aocl program Programs the FPGA device with FPGA device image that you extracted from your multiarchitecture binary file.
REMEMBER:
Typically, this operation is handled by the runtime and you do not need to program the FPGA device explicitly with this command. You might consider explicitly programming the FPGA device when you want to avoid the overhead of programming the device.
aocl flash For BSPs that support programming the board flash memory, you can use this command to load the board flash memory with a specified startup configuration.