RIFFA 2.0: A reusable integration framework for FPGA accelerators

Abstract

We present RIFFA 2.0, a reusable integration framework for FPGA accelerators. RIFFA 2.0 provides communication and synchronization for FPGA accelerated applications using simple interfaces for hardware and software. Our goal is to expand the use of FPGAs as an acceleration platform by releasing, as open source, a framework that easily integrates software running on commodity CPUs with FPGA cores. RIFFA 2.0 uses PCIe to connect FPGAs to a CPU's system bus. RIFFA 2.0 extends the original RIFFA project by supporting more classes of Xilinx FPGAs, multiple FPGAs in a system, more PCIe link configurations, higher bandwidth, and Linux and Windows operating systems. This release also supports C/C++, Java, and Python bindings. Tests show that data transfers between hardware and software can saturate the PCIe link to achieve the highest bandwidth possible.