Developer Guide
Intel® oneAPI DPC++/C++ Compiler Handbook for FPGAs
ID
785441
Date
5/05/2025
Public
Intel oneAPI DPC++/C++ Compiler Handbook for FPGAs Overview
Introduction To FPGA Design Concepts
Intel oneAPI FPGA Development
Getting Started with the Intel oneAPI DPC++/C++ Compiler for Intel FPGA Development
Defining a Kernel for FPGAs
Debugging and Verifying Your Design
Analyzing Your Design
Optimizing Your Kernel
Optimizing Your Host Application
Integrating Your Kernel into DSP Builder for Intel FPGAs
Integrating Your RTL IP Core Into a System
RTL IP Core Kernel Interfaces
Loops
Pipes
Data Types and Arithmetic Operations
Parallelism
Memories and Memory Operations
Libraries
Additional FPGA Acceleration Flow Considerations
FPGA Optimization Flags, Attributes, Pragmas, and Extensions
Quick Reference
Additional Information
Document Revision History for the Intel oneAPI DPC++/C++ Compiler Handbook for Intel FPGAs
Notices and Disclaimers
Throughput
Resource Use
System-level Profiling Using the Intercept Layer for OpenCL™ Applications
Multithreaded Host Application
Utilizing Hardware Kernel Invocation Queue
Double Buffering Host Utilizing Kernel Invocation Queue
N-Way Buffering to Overlap Kernel Execution
Prepinning Memory
Simple Host-Device Streaming
Buffered Host-Device Streaming
Refactor the Loop-Carried Data Dependency
Relax Loop-Carried Dependency
Transfer Loop-Carried Dependency to Local Memory
Minimize the Memory Dependencies for Loop Pipelining
Unroll Loops
Fuse Loops to Reduce Overhead and Improve Performance
Optimize Loops With Loop Speculation
Remove Loop Bottlenecks
Improve fMAX/II with Shannonization
Optimize Inner Loop Throughput
Improve Loop Performance by Caching Data in On-Chip Memory
Global Memory Bandwidth Use Calculation
Manual Partition of Global Memory
Partitioning Buffers Across Different Memory Types (Heterogeneous Memory)
Partitioning Buffers Across Memory Channels of the Same Memory Type
Ignoring Dependencies Between Accessor Arguments
Contiguous Memory Accesses
Static Memory Coalescing
Specify Schedule fMAX Target for Kernels (-Xsclock=<clock target>)
Create a 2xclock Interface (-Xsuse-2xclock)
Disable Burst-Interleaving of Global Memory (-Xsno-interleaving)
Force Ring Interconnect for Global Memory (-Xsglobal-ring)
Force a Single Store Ring to Reduce Area (-Xsforce-single-store-ring)
Force Fewer Read Data Reorder Units to Reduce Area (-Xsnum-reorder)
Disable Hardware Kernel Invocation Queue (-Xsno-hardware-kernel-invocation-queue)
Modify the Handshaking Protocol Between Clusters (-Xshyper-optimized-handshaking)
Disable Automatic Fusion of Loops (-Xsdisable-auto-loop-fusion)
Fuse Adjacent Loops With Unequal Trip Counts (-Xsenable-unequal-tc-fusion)
Pipeline Loops in Non-task Kernels (-Xsauto-pipeline)
Control Semantics of Floating-Point Operations (-fp-model=<value>)
Modify the Rounding Mode of Floating-point Operations (-Xsrounding=<rounding_type>)
Global Control of Exit FIFO Latency of Stall-free Clusters (-Xssfc-exit-fifo-type=<value>)
Enable the Read-Only Cache for Read-Only Accessors (-Xsread-only-cache-size=<N>)
Control Hardware Implementation of the Supported Data Types and Math Operations (-Xsdsp-mode=<option>)
Generate Register Map Wrapper (-Xsregister-map-wrapper-type)
Allow Wide Memory Initialization (-Xsallow-wide-device-globals)
Specify Schedule fMAX Target for Kernels (scheduler_target_fmax_mhz)
Specify a Workgroup Size (max_work_group_size/reqd_work_group_size)
Specify Number of SIMD Work Items (num_simd_work_items)
Omit Hardware that Generates and Dispatches Kernel IDs (max_global_work_dim)
Omit Hardware that Supports Global Work Offsets (no_global_work_offset)
Reduce Kernel Area and Latency (use_stall_enable_clusters)
Compile and Emulate Your Design
To compile and emulate your FPGA kernel design, perform the following steps:
- Modify the host part of your program to declare the sycl::ext::intel::fpga_emulator_selector_v device selector. Use this selector when instantiating a device queue for enqueuing your FPGA device kernel. For more information, refer to Device Selectors for FPGA.
- Compile your design by including the -fintelfpga option in your icpx command to generate an executable.
- Run the resulting executable:
For Windows:
- Define the number of emulated devices by invoking the following command:
set CL_CONFIG_CPU_EMULATE_DEVICES=<number_of_devices>
- Run the executable.
- Invoke the following command to unset the variable:
set CL_CONFIG_CPU_EMULATE_DEVICES=
- Define the number of emulated devices by invoking the following command:
For Linux, invoke the following command:
env CL_CONFIG_CPU_EMULATE_DEVICES=<number_of_devices> <executable_filename>
This command specifies the number of identical emulation devices that the emulator must provide.
TIP:If you want to use only one emulator device, you need not set the CL_CONFIG_CPU_EMULATE_DEVICES environment variable.
NOTE:
- The emulator is built with GCC 7.4.0 as part of the Intel® oneAPI DPC++/C++ Compiler. When running the executable for an emulated FPGA device, the version of libstdc++.so must be at least that of GCC 7.4.0. In other words, the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable must ensure that the correct version of libstdc++.so is found.
If the correct version of libstdc++.so is not found, the call to clGetPlatformIDs function fails to load the FPGA emulator platform and returns CL_PLATFORM_NOT_FOUND_KHR (error code -1001). Depending on which version of libstdc++.so is found, the call to clGetPlatformIDs may succeed, but a later call to the clCreateContext function may fail with CL_DEVICE_NOT_AVAILABLE (error code -2).
If the LD_LIBRARY_PATH does not point to a compatible libstdc++.so, use the following syntax to invoke the host program:
env LD_LIBRARY_PATH=<path to compatible libstdc++.so>:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH <executable> [executable arguments]