Buffer Descriptors overview - 2025.2 English - XD100

Vitis Tutorials: AI Engine Development (XD100)

Document ID
XD100
Release Date
2025-12-05
Version
2025.2 English

Buffer descriptors are a set of registers that exist within Memory Modules, Memory Tiles and AI Engine-ML Interfaces that allows DMA programming. It is a way to program the address generator so that data can be read or written from/to the memory. It describes an access scheme that is repeated over and over.

The number of MM2S/S2MM and buffer descriptors is different in the 3 different domains:

Location

Number of MM2S/S2MM

Number of BDs

AI Engine

AI Engine-ML

Memory Module

2/2

16

Memory Tile

6/6

48 (24+24)

NA

AI Engine Array Interface

2/2

16

In memory modules and Array Interface, the 16 BDs can be accessed by all MM2S and S2MM. In Memory tiles, the BDs and DMA channels are split in 2 sets:

  • S2MM and MM2S index 0, 2, 4 can access BD from 0 to 23

  • S2MM and MM2S index 1, 3, 5 can access BD from 24 to 47