User-managed PL kernels have no predefined execution mode. It is up to the kernel designer to implement the control protocol and the execution mechanism. It is the application developer's responsibility to manage the operation of the kernel by executing appropriate sequences of register reads and writes from the software application, in accordance with the user-defined control protocol of the kernel.
XRT-managed PL kernels, as described in Supported Kernel Execution Models in the XRT documentation, provide defined kernel execution modes supporting overlapping execution of the kernel, or sequential execution.
- A kernel is started by the software application using an XRT API call. When the kernel is ready for new data it notifies the host application through bits in the control register.
- The default control protocol,
ap_ctrl_chain
, supports pipelined execution enabling multiple executions of the same PL kernel to be overlapped to improve the overall application throughput. - If required, pipelined execution can be disabled by using the
ap_ctrl_hs
control protocol which forces kernels to run sequentially, waiting until the prior run has completed before starting the next run. - Finally, a kernel can be auto-restarting, allowing it to run for a specified number of iterations, or until reset by the host application as described in Auto-Restarting Kernels in Vitis High-Level Synthesis User Guide (UG1399).