PCIe Transfer Write Bandwith - 2021.1 English

Vitis Guidance Messaging (UG1315)

Document ID
UG1315
Release Date
2021-06-16
Version
2021.1 English

Description

PCIe® transfer of data to FPGA is not optimized. This is flagged when the transfer rate from host to FPGA is less than 70% of the maximum possible write transfer bandwidth of PCIe.

Explanation

XRT computes all the data transfer from the FPGA to PCIe over a period of time and calculates the PCIe write transfer.

There are several factors that can reduce the write transfer usage of PCIe:

  • The host using small buffers.
  • DDR contention from host reading data to DDR memory and kernel reading data to the same DDR memory.
  • The host receiving several smaller transfers.

Resolution

Xilinx recommends aggregating the data to be transferred in a single buffer and send it over PCIe® to DDR memory. PCIe® bandwidth is usually reasonable if the buffer size to be transferred is about 4 KB. Use multiple DDR memory banks to remove issues from the host and kernel writing to same the memory.