In the AMD Vitis™ environment the software application component can be written in native C++ using the Xilinx Runtime (XRT) native API. The XRT native API is described here in brief, with additional details available under XRT Native API on the XRT documentation site. The Application component is generally referred to as the host application for Data Center acceleration as it runs on an x86 server.
Tip: For examples of software
application programming using the XRT native API refer to host_xrt in the Vitis_Accel_Examples.
In general, the structure of the host application can be divided into the following steps:
- Specifying the platform device ID and loading the .xclbin
- Setting up the PL kernel and kernel arguments
- Transferring data between the software application and PL kernels
- Running the system and returning results
To use the native XRT APIs, the host application must link with the
xrt_coreutil library. For example:
g++ -g -std=c++17 -I$XILINX_XRT/include -L$XILINX_XRT/lib -lxrt_coreutil -pthreadCompiling host code with XRT native C++ API requires C++ standard with -std=c++17. On GCC version older than 4.9.0, use -std=c++1y instead because -std=c++17 is introduced to GCC from 4.9.0.
Important: For multithreading the host
application, exercise caution when calling a
fork()
system call. The fork() does not duplicate all the
runtime threads. Hence, the child process cannot run as a complete application in the
Vitis core development kit. It is advisable to
use the posix_spawn() system call to launch another
process from the Vitis software platform
application.