The Xbutler tool manages and controls Xilinx FPGA resources on a machine. With the Vitis AI 1.0 release, installing Xbutler is mandatory for running a deep-learning solution using Xbutler. Xbutler is implemented as a server-client paradigm. Xbutler is an addon library on top of Xilinx XRT to facilitate multi-FPGA resource management. Xbutler is not a replacement to Xilinx XRT. The feature list for Xbutler is as follows:
- Enables multi-FPGA heterogeneous support
- C++/Python API and CLI for the clients to allocate, use, and release resources
- Enables resource allocation at FPGA, Compute unit (CU), and Service granularity
- Auto-release resource
- Multi-client support: Enables multi-client/users/processes request
- XCLBIN-to-DSA auto-association
- Resource sharing amongst clients/users
- Containerized support
- User defined function
- Logging support