L-Tile and H-Tile Avalon® Memory-mapped Intel® FPGA IP for PCI Express* User Guide

ID 683667
Date 3/05/2024
Public
Document Table of Contents

3.2. Avalon-MM DMA Interfaces when Descriptor Controller is Externally Instantiated

This configuration results from selecting Enable Avalon-MM DMA and disabling Instantiate internal descriptor controller in the component GUI. This configuration requires you to include a custom DMA descriptor controller in your application.

Using the external DMA descriptor controller provides more flexibility. You can either modify the example design's DMA Descriptor Controller or replace it to meet your system requirements.You may need to modify the DMA Descriptor Controller for the following reasons:

  • To implement multi-channel operation
  • To implement the descriptors as a linked list or to implement a custom DMA programming model
  • To fetch descriptors from local memory, instead of system (host-side) memory

To interface to the DMA logic included in this variant, the custom DMA descriptor controller must implement the following functions:

  • It must provide the descriptors to the PCIe Read DMA Data Mover and PCIe Write DMA Data Mover.
  • It must process the status that the DMA Avalon-MM write (wr_dcm) and read (rd_dcm) masters provide.

The following figure shows the Avalon-MM DMA Bridge when the a custom descriptor controller drives the PCIe Read DMA and Write DMA Data Movers.

Figure 21. Avalon-MM DMA Bridge Block Diagram with Externally Instantiated Descriptor Controller

This configuration includes the PCIe Read DMA and Write DMA Data Movers. The custom DMA descriptor controller must connect to the following Data Mover interfaces:

  • PCIe Read DMA Control Sink: This is a 160-bit, Avalon-ST sink interface. The custom DMA descriptor controller drives descriptor table entries on this bus. The prefix for the interface is rd_ast_rx*.
  • PCIe Write DMA Control Sink: This is a 160-bit, Avalon-ST sink interface. The custom DMA descriptor controller drives write table entries on this bus. The prefix for this interface is wr_ast_rx*.
  • PCIe Read DMA Status Source: The Read Data Mover reports status to the custom DMA descriptor controller on this interface. The prefix for this interface is rd_ast_tx_*.
  • PCIe Write DMA Status Source: The Write Data Mover reports status to the custom DMA descriptor controller on this interface. The prefix for this interface is wr_ast_tx_*.