FPGA AI Suite Handbook

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

5.1.7. Building an FPGA Bitstream for the PCIe Design Example

To complete this portion of the tutorial, you must meet the following prerequisites:
  • You must have a license for bitstream generation of the FPGA AI Suite IP.
  • You must have a specific version of Quartus® Prime Pro Edition installed:
    • The PCIe design example for Agilex™ 7 devices requires Quartus® Prime Pro Edition Version 22.4 or later. This document assumes that Version 25.3 is used.
  • You must have the following paths included in your $PATH environment variable:
    • quartus/bin
    • qsys/bin

If you do not have a license for FPGA AI Suite, the generated IP has a built-in inference-count limitation. Any inference operations that occur after the limit is reached generate an error message that indicates that a license is required. To reset the inference count limit, you must reprogram the bitstream onto the FPGA device.

Building an FPGA Bitstream for the PCIe Design Example for Agilex™ 7 Devices

Run the following command for the PCIe design example for Agilex™ 7 devices:
cd $COREDLA_WORK/demo

dla_build_example_design.py build agx7_de10_pcie \
    $COREDLA_ROOT/example_architectures/AGX7_Performance.arch \ 
    --output-dir $COREDLA_WORK/demo/my_bitstreams/

If the AOCL_BOARD_PACKAGE_ROOT environment variable is not set, the dla_build_example_design.py command returns an error message. To set this environment variable, review the instructions in Additional Software Prerequisites for the FPGA AI Suite PCIe Design Example for Agilex 7 Devices.

The dla_build_example_design.py command has a number of actions it can take. For a full list of actions, run the following command:
dla_build_example_design.py --help
For a list of options supported by an action, run the following command:
dla_build_example_design.py <action> --help
For example, the dla_build_example_design.p build command provides a --seed option that you can use to vary the Quartus® Prime random seed.

This commands places the bitstreams into the my_bitstreams directory. The bitstream is named AGX7_Performance.sof.

After the bitstream is built, you must program it onto the FPGA following the instructions in section Programming the FPGA Device.