FPGA AI Suite Handbook

ID 863373
Date 11/21/2025
Public
Document Table of Contents

17.1. Understanding the FPGA AI Suite Runtime Software Stack

After familiarizing with the compile time software stack, you will recall that the ML graph of your choice as described in the .xml and .bin files (created by the Model Converter) is compiled for a specific FPGA AI Suite architecture file by using the FPGA AI Suite compiler. The output of the dla_compiler contains the FPGA AI Suite Runtime Binary (.bin file). This .bin file created by the compiler contains the compiled network parameters for all the target devices (FPGA, CPU, or both) along with the weights and biases. Since it uses the same .bin format as required by the OpenVINO™ Inference Engine, your inference application can import this file at runtime and load the compiled network onto your target devices for inference.


In the $COREDLA_WORK/runtime folder, you will find the build_runtime.sh script to build runtime for the system architecture of your choice. Review the following sections to decide on which system architecture suits your application requirements:
The interaction between the OpenVINO™ FPGA Runtime Plugin, FPGA AI Suite Runtime Plugin, Host, and FPGA device can be captured in the following illustration.


For a detailed explanation on the board driver using Open FPGA Stack, refer to the Open FPGA Stack (OFS) Software Developer Journey Guide.