Intel® Stratix® 10 Embedded Memory User Guide

ID 683423
Date 9/26/2022
Public

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4.4. FIFO2 Intel® FPGA IP

Intel® provides FIFO2 Intel® FPGA IP core as an alternative solution for the FIFO Intel® FPGA IP core for applications running at wide data width and very high operating frequencies (Fmax) to achieve high data bandwidth.

The FIFO functions in the FIFO2 Intel® FPGA IP core are mostly applied in data buffering applications that comply with the first-in-first-out data flow in synchronous or asynchronous clock domains.

Note: The FIFO2 Intel® FPGA IP core has no backward compatibility to the FIFO Intel® FPGA IP core.
Table 55.  Differences between FIFO and FIFO2 Intel® FPGA IP Cores
Feature Intel® FPGA IP Cores
FIFO FIFO2
Read latency 0 to 1 clock cycle after the rdreq signal is asserted. 3 to 4 clock cycles after the rdreq is asserted.
Read valid when r_empty signal is low. r_valid signal is high.
Show-ahead mode Supported Not supported
Depth (D) and width (W) configuration Per user requirement Multiple of hard memory block only (32W x 512D for M20K, 20W x 32D for MLAB)
Output data initial state 0 Unknown
Flushing Not required A minimum of 32 slow clock cycle flushings is required.

Before any read-out operations, the applications data is first written (partially or entirely) into the FIFO2 Intel® FPGA IP core. The data read operations can be in long continuous bursts or a single clock read. While there is no specific write or read limitation, the bandwidth utilization will be less efficient for short writes and/or reads due to incurred latencies.

The read interface of the FIFO2 Intel® FPGA IP core is suitable for applications that does not perform back-pressure or for applications with a "cascaded" buffer further downstream.

For example,

  • At MAC RX user interface, which typically cannot be back-pressured, which is equivalent to always read.
  • Along MAX TX internal data path to harden Native PHY FIFO. The FIFO read operations may then be derived from the Native PHY FIFO partial full status.

User application can connect to the read interface of the FIFO2 Intel® FPGA IP core directly to a small SCFIFO (or similar storage buffers) externally to change the read-to-data latency to be zero but at the expense of Fmax and resources.

In practice, all clocks run at several hundred MHz. This is because the FIFO2 Intel® FPGA IP core is highly pipelined to run at very high Fmax, and is not be suitable for slow clocks due to the long latency.