Intel® FPGA SDK for OpenCL™ Standard Edition: Getting Started Guide

ID 683678
Date 9/24/2018
Public
Document Table of Contents

3.5. Installing an FPGA Board

Before creating an OpenCL™ application for an FPGA board on Linux, you must first download and install the Custom Platform from your board vendor. Most Custom Platform installers require administrator privileges. To install your board into a Linux host system, invoke the install utility command.
The steps below outline the board installation procedure. Some Custom Platforms require additional installation tasks. Consult your board vendor's documentation for further information on board installation.
  1. Follow your board vendor's instructions to connect the FPGA board to your system.
  2. Download the Custom Platform for your FPGA board from your board vendor's website. To download an Intel® FPGA SDK for OpenCL™ Reference Platform, refer to the Intel® FPGA SDK for OpenCL™ FPGA Platforms page.
  3. Install the Custom Platform in a directory that you own (that is, not a system directory).

    You can install multiple Custom Platforms simultaneously on the same system. To use the RTE utilities, such as aocl diagnose with multiple Custom Platforms. The Custom Platform subdirectory contains the board_env.xml file.

    In a system with multiple Custom Platforms, ensure that the host program uses the FPGA Client Drivers (FCD) to discover the boards rather than linking to the Custom Platforms' memory-mapped device (MMD) libraries directly. If FCD is correctly set up for Custom Platform, FCD finds all the installed boards at runtime.

  4. Set the QUARTUS_ROOTDIR_OVERRIDE user environment variable to point to the Intel® Quartus® Prime Standard Edition software installation directory. Open a shell and then type echo $QUARTUS_ROOTDIR_OVERRIDE at the command prompt.
  5. Add the paths to the Custom Platform libraries (for example, memory-mapped (MMD) library) to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable setting.

    For information on setting Linux user environment variables and running the init_opencl script, refer to the Setting the Intel® FPGA SDK for OpenCL™ Standard Edition User Environment Variables section.

  6. Remember: You need sudo or root privileges to install a board.
    Invoke the command aocl install <path_to_customplatform> at a command prompt.

    Invoking aocl install <path_to_customplatform> also installs a board driver that allows communication between host applications and hardware kernel programs.

  7. To query a list of FPGA devices installed in your machine, invoke the aocl diagnose command.

    The software generates an output that includes the <device_name>, which is an acl number that ranges from acl0 to acl31.

    Attention: For more information on querying the <device_name> of your accelerator board, refer to the Querying the Device Name of Your FPGA Board section.
  8. To verify the successful installation of the FPGA board, invoke the command aocl diagnose <device_name> to run any board vendor-recommended diagnostic test.