Accelerator Functional Unit Developer’s Guide for Intel® FPGA Programmable Acceleration Card

ID 683129
Date 7/20/2020
Public
Document Table of Contents

1.3. Acronym List for Accelerator Functional Unit Developer’s Guide

Table 2.  Acronyms

Acronyms

Expansion

Description

AFU

Accelerator Functional Unit

Hardware Accelerator implemented in FPGA logic which offloads a computational operation for an application from the CPU to improve performance.

AF

Accelerator Function

Compiled Hardware Accelerator image implemented in FPGA logic that accelerates an application. An AFU and associated AFs may also be referred to as GBS (Green-Bits, Green BitStream) in the Acceleration Stack installation directory tree and in source code comments.

API

Application Programming Interface

A set of subroutine definitions, protocols, and tools for building software applications.

ASE

AFU Simulation Environment

Co-simulation environment that allows you to use the same host application and AF in a simulation environment. ASE is part of the Intel Acceleration Stack for FPGAs.

CCI-P Core Cache Interface

CCI-P is the standard interface AFUs use to communicate with the host.

FIU

FPGA Interface Unit

FIU is a platform interface layer that acts as a bridge between platform interfaces like PCIe* , UPI and AFU-side interfaces such as CCI-P.

FIM

FPGA Interface Manager

The FPGA hardware containing the FPGA Interface Unit (FIU) and external interfaces for memory, networking, etc.

The FIM may also be referred to as BBS (Blue-Bits, Blue BitStream) in the Acceleration Stack installation directory tree and in source code comments.

The Accelerator Function (AF) interfaces with the FIM at run time.

NLB

Native Loopback

The NLB performs reads and writes to the CCI-P link to test connectivity and throughput.

OPAE

Open Programmable Acceleration Engine

The OPAE is a software framework for managing and accessing AFs. 

PR

Partial Reconfiguration The ability to dynamically reconfigure a portion of an FPGA while the remaining FPGA design continues to function.

TCP

Transmission Control Protocol

TCP is a standard Internet protocol that defines how to establish and maintain a network conversation through which application programs can exchange data.

PIM Platform Interface Manager An abstraction layer for managing top-level device ports and system-provided clock crossing.
HSSI High Speed Serial Interface Reference to the multi-gigabit serial transceiver I/O in the FIM and the corresponding interface to the AFU.