AN 881: PCI Express* Gen3 x16 Avalon® Memory Mapped (Avalon-MM) DMA with DDR4 SDRAM and HBM2 Memories Reference Design

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ID 683291
Date 4/19/2021
Public
Document Table of Contents
Document Table of Contents x
1. Introduction 2. Reference Design Description 3. Understanding PCI Express* throughput 4. Document Revision History for AN 881: PCI Express* Gen3 x16 Avalon® Memory Mapped (Avalon-MM) DMA with External and HBM2 Memories Reference Design
1. Introduction x
1.1. PCI Express Gen3 x16 Avalon-MM DMA with External and HBM2 Memory Hardware and Software Requirements 1.2. Avalon-MM Bridge with DMA Module Description 1.3. DMA Procedure Steps 1.4. Setting Up the Hardware 1.5. Installing the DMA Test Driver and Running the Linux DMA Software
2. Reference Design Description x
2.1. Project Hierarchy 2.2. Parameter Settings for PCI Express* Hard IP Variations 2.3. PCIe Avalon-MM DMA Reference Design with External and HBM2 Memories Platform Designer System 2.4. Intel Stratix 10 MX DMA Memory Throughput
3. Understanding PCI Express* throughput x
3.1. Throughput for Posted Writes 3.2. Throughput for Reads
3.1. Throughput for Posted Writes x
3.1.1. Specifying the Maximum Payload Size
3.2. Throughput for Reads x
3.2.1. Understanding Throughput Measurement
1. Introduction
2. Reference Design Description
3. Understanding PCI Express* throughput
4. Document Revision History for AN 881: PCI Express* Gen3 x16 Avalon® Memory Mapped (Avalon-MM) DMA with External and HBM2 Memories Reference Design

1. Introduction

This document covers a reference design using the PCI Express* Avalon® Memory-Mapped ( Avalon® -MM) Direct Memory Access (DMA) with Memory IP Interfaces. This reference design demonstrates the performance of the Avalon® -MM Intel® Stratix® 10 Hard IP+ for PCI Express* , a high-performance DMA controller with two types of memory solutions: external (DDR4) and HBM2 memories.

The reference design includes a Linux* software driver to set up the DMA transfers with high-throughput data movers for DMA support. The Read Data Mover moves data from the system memory to the external or HBM2 memory in Avalon® -MM space . The Write Data Mover moves data from the external or HBM2 memory in the application logic to the system memory in PCIe* space. This reference design allows you to evaluate the performance of the Avalon® -MM Intel® Stratix® 10 Hard IP+ for PCI Express* while using the Avalon-MM interface with high-performance DMA with different memory IPs.

Figure 1.  Avalon® -MM DMA and Address Mapping Block Diagram
Table 1.  Reference Design Information
Reference Design Hardware Throughput with HBM2 (GB/s) Throughput with DDR4 (GB/s) Gate Counts Design Link
Read Write Read Write
Avalon® -MM Intel® Stratix® 10 MX Hard IP+ DMA with HBM2 and DDR4 Intel® Stratix® 10 MX FPGA Development Kit 14.42 14.07 14.82 14.06

77K ALMs

85K ALUTs

697 M20Ks

PCI Express Gen3 x16 AVMM DMA with HBM2 and DDR4 Reference Design
Note: To download this reference designs, first make sure that you have access to the Intel Design Store by logging into Design Store. You can then click on the link provided in the table above to download the design.
Note: Although the theoretical maximum throughput for either Read or Write operations is 16 GB/s, the real throughput will be less than that (as shown in the table above) due to the overhead inherent in the PCI Express* protocol.
For Intel® Arria® 10, Intel® Cyclone® 10 GX or Intel® Stratix® 10 SX, GX or TX devices and Avalon® -MM DMA configurations up to Gen3 x8, refer to:
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