1. Overview of AWS EC2 FPGA Development Kit
   • Development Flow
   • Development environments
   • FPGA Developer AMI
   • FPGA Hardware Development Kit (HDK)
   • FPGA Software Development Kit (SDK)
   • Software Defined Development Environment
2. Amazon EC2 F1 platform features
3. Getting Started
   • Getting Familiar with AWS
   • First time setup
   • Quickstarts
   • How To's
4. Documentation Overview
5. Developer Support

AWS EC2 FPGA Development Kit is a set of development and runtime tools to develop, simulate, debug, compile and run hardware accelerated applications on Amazon EC2 F1 instances. It is distributed between this github repository and FPGA Developer AMI - Centos/AL2 provided by AWS with no cost of development tools.

⚠️ NOTE: The developer kit is supported for Linux operating systems only.

After creating an FPGA design (also called CL - Custom logic), developers can create an Amazon FPGA Image (AFI) and easily deploy it to an F1 instance. AFIs are reusable, shareable and can be deployed in a scalable and secure way.

For on-premise development, SDAccel/Vitis/Vivado must have the correct license and use one of the supported tool versions.

The FPGA Developer AMI is available on the AWS marketplace without a software charge and includes tools needed for developing FPGA Designs to run on AWS F1.

Given the large size of the FPGA used inside AWS F1 Instances, Xilinx tools work best with 32GiB Memory. z1d.xlarge/c5.4xlarge and z1d.2xlarge/c5.8xlarge instance types would provide the fastest execution time with 30GiB+ and 60GiB+ of memory respectively. Developers who want to save on cost, could start coding and run simulations on low-cost instances, like t2.2xlarge, and move to the aforementioned larger instances to run the synthesis of their acceleration code.

AWS marketplace offers multiple versions of the FPGA Developer AMI. The following compatibility table describes the mapping of currently supported developer kit versions to AMI versions:

⚠️ Developer kit release v1.4.16 will remove support for Xilinx 2017.4, 2018.2, 2018.3 toolsets. While developer kit release v1.4.16 onwards will not support older Xilinx tools, you can still use them using HDK releases v1.4.15b or earlier. Please checkout the latest v1.4.15b release tag from Github to use Xilinx 2017.4, 2018.2, 2018.3 toolsets.

⚠️ Developer kit versions prior to v1.3.7 and Developer AMI prior to v1.4 (2017.1) reached end-of-life. See AWS forum announcement for additional details.

For software-defined development please look at the runtime compatibility table based on the Xilinx toolset in use: SDAccel or Vitis

The HDK directory contains documentation, examples, simulation, build and AFI creation scripts to start building Amazon FPGA Images (AFI).
The HDK can be installed on any on-premises server or an EC2 instance. The developer kit is not required if you plan to use a pre-built AFI shared from another developer.

With Amazon EC2 FPGA instances, each FPGA is divided into two partitions:

• Shell (SH) – AWS platform logic implementing the FPGA external peripherals, PCIe, DRAM, and Interrupts.

• Custom Logic (CL) – Custom acceleration logic created by an FPGA Developer.

At the end of the development process, combining the Shell and CL creates an Amazon FPGA Image (AFI) that can be loaded onto the Amazon EC2 FPGA Instances.

The following table provides the shells currently available to develop your CL with. Each shell provides specific interfaces and features and currently needs to be used with the Dev Kit branch listed in the table.

For more details, check the FAQ

The software-defined development environment allows customers to compile their C/C++/OpenCL code into the FPGA as kernels, and use OpenCL APIs to pass data to the FPGA. Software developers with no FPGA experience will find a familiar development experience that supercharges cloud applications.

In addition, this development environment allows for a mix of C/C++ and RTL accelerator designs into a C/C++ software based development environment. This method enables faster prototyping using C/C++ while supporting manual optimization of critical blocks within RTL. This approach is similar to optimizing time critical functions using software compiler optimization methods.

To get started with Xilinx SDAccel, review the Software-defined development environment readme. To get started with Xilinx Vitis, review the Vitis unified development environment readme.

The SDK directory includes the runtime environment required to run on EC2 FPGA instances. It includes the drivers and tools to manage the AFIs that are loaded on the FPGA instance. The SDK isn't required during the AFI development process; it is only required once an AFI is loaded onto an EC2 FPGA instance. The following sdk resources are provided:

• Linux Kernel Drivers - The developer kit includes three drivers:
  • XDMA Driver - DMA interface to/from HDK accelerators.
• FPGA Libraries - APIs used by C/C++ host applications.
• FPGA Management Tools - AFI management APIs for runtime loading/clearing FPGA image, gathering metrics and debug interface on the F1 instance.

• 1-8 Xilinx UltraScale+ VU9P based FPGA slots
• Per FPGA Slot, Interfaces available for Custom Logic(CL):
  • One x16 PCIe Gen 3 Interface
  • Four DDR4 RDIMM interfaces (with ECC)
  • AXI4 protocol support on all interfaces
• User-defined clock frequency driving all CL to Shell interfaces
• Multiple free running auxiliary clocks
• PCI-E endpoint presentation to Custom Logic(CL)
  • Management PF (physical function)
  • Application PF
• Virtual JTAG, Virtual LED, Virtual DIP Switches
• PCI-E interface between Shell(SH) and Custom Logic(CL).
  • SH to CL inbound 512-bit AXI4 interface
  • CL to SH outbound 512-bit AXI4 interface
  • Multiple 32-bit AXI-Lite buses for register access, mapped to different PCIe BARs
  • Maximum payload size set by the Shell
  • Maximum read request size set by the Shell
  • AXI4 error handling
• DDR interface between SH and CL
  • CL to SH 512-bit AXI4 interface
  • 1 DDR controller implemented in the SH (always available)
  • 3 DDR controllers implemented in the CL (configurable number of implemented controllers allowed)

If you have never used AWS before, we recommend you start with AWS getting started training, and focus on the basics of the AWS EC2 and AWS S3 services. Understanding the fundamentals of these services will make it easier to work with AWS F1 and the FPGA Developer Kit.

FPGA Image generation and EC2 F1 instances are supported in the us-east-1 (N. Virginia), us-west-2 (Oregon), eu-west-1 (Ireland) and us-gov-west-1 (GovCloud US) regions.

⚠️ NOTE: By default, your AWS Account will have an EC2 F1 Instance launch limit of 0. Before using F1 instances, you will have to open a Support Case to increase the EC2 Instance limits to allow launching F1 instances.

You have the choice to develop on AWS EC2 using the FPGA Developer AMI or on-premise.

ℹ️ INFO: We suggest starting with the FPGA Developer AMI with build instances on EC2 as it has Xilinx tools and licenses setup for you to be able to quickly get into development.

ℹ️ INFO: For on-premise development, you will need to have Xilinx tools and licenses available for you to use

1. Start a Build Instance first to start your development.

   💡 TIP: This instance does not have to be an F1 instance. You only require an F1 instance to run your AFI's(Amazon FPGA Image) once you have gone through your design build and AFI creation steps.

   ℹ️ INFO: If you need to follow GUI Development flows, please checkout our Developer Resources where we provide Step-By-Step guides to setting up a GUI Desktop.

2. Clone the FPGA Developer Kit on your instance. git clone https://github.com/aws/aws-fpga.git

3. Follow the quickstarts from the next section.

Before you create your own AWS FPGA design, we recommend that you go through one of the step-by-step Quickstart guides:

ℹ️ INFO: For more in-depth applications and examples of using High level synthesis, Vitis Libraries, App Notes and Workshops, please refer to our Example List

Documentation is located throughout this developer kit and the table below consolidates a list of key documents to help developers find information:

• The Amazon FPGA Development User Forum is the first place to go to post questions, learn from other users and read announcements.

  • We recommend joining the AWS forums to engage with the FPGA developer community, AWS and Xilinx engineers to get help.

• You could also file a Github Issue for support. We prefer the forums as this helps the entire community learn from issues, feedback and answers.

  • Click the "Watch" button in GitHub upper right corner to get regular updates.