Introduction

LibOCXL provides an access library which allows the user to implement a userspace driver for an OpenCAPI accelerator.

Features

Initialization

AFUs may be opened using the device path or AFU name. If an multiple AFU instances with the same name are available, the first AFU found with available contexts will be used.

Operation

LibOCXL provides functions to attach to an AFU and transfer data to & from the MMIO areas on the AFU. AFU IRQs can be queried either by IRQ handles, or by associating a callback to the IRQ.

MMIO

Functions are provide to allow 32 & 64 bit access to the global and per-PASID MMIO areas on the the AFU. Endian conversion is handled automatically.

Installation

LibOCXL is available in popular Linux distributions for PPC64le. To install:

Redhat

yum install libocxl-devel

Fedora

dnf install libocxl-devel

Ubuntu/Debian

apt install libocxl-dev

Building

Prerequisites

1. A GCC toolchain with libc (if cross compiling), crosstool-ng can build a suitable toolchain if your cross compiler does not include libc.
2. Doxygen 1.8.14 or later. Earlier versions will work, but don't generate enums in the man pages correctly.
3. Astyle, if you plan on submitting patches.
4. CPPCheck, if you plan on submitting patches.
5. libFUSE, to run tests

Included Dependencies

• OCXL headers from the Linux kernel

Build Instructions (Local build)

• make
• PREFIX=/usr/local make install

Build Instructions (Cross compilation)

• export CROSS_COMPILE=/path/to/compiler/bin/powerpc64le-unknown-linux-gnu-
• make

Usage

A typical use of libocxl will follow this pattern:

1. Setup: optionally turn on error reporting for the open calls: ocxl_enable_messages().
2. Open the device: ocxl_afu_open() if an AFU name is used, or ocxl_afu_open_from_dev() if a device path is used. Optionally turn on error reporting for the AFU: ocxl_afu_enable_messages().
3. Allocate IRQs: ocxl_irq_alloc(). This returns a sequential per-AFU IRQ number. An opaque pointer is associated with the handle in which the caller can store additional information. This is not used by OpenCAPI, but is passed as part of the event information to provide additional context to the IRQ handler.
4. Configure global MMIO: Some AFUs may have a global MMIO area, which will contain configuration information that will affect all PASIDs on the AFU. Use ocxl_mmio_map() to make the area available, then use ocxl_mmio_write32() and ocxl_mmio_write64() to write the information.
5. Configure the per-PASID MMIO: Some AFUs support multiple contexts, and each context will get it's own MMIO area for configuration and communication. Typical information that may be communicated across the MMIO interface include IRQ handles (obtained with ocxl_irq_get_handle()), and pointers to AFU-specific data structures. Use ocxl_mmio_map to make the area available, then use ocxl_mmio_write32() and ocxl_mmio_write64() to write the information.
6. Attach the AFU context to the process: Use ocxl_afu_attach() to make the process's address space available to the AFU context, allowing it to read & write to the process's memory.
7. Signal the AFU to do some work: This is typically done via a write into the per-PASID MMIO area.
8. Handle AFU IRQs: Pending IRQs can be queried using ocxl_afu_event_check(). An IRQ event contains the IRQ number, the info pointer assigned when activated, the 64 bit IRQ handle, and the number of times the IRQ has been triggered since last checked.
9. Read results: Work completion may be signalled by the AFU via an IRQ, or by writing to the MMIO area. Typically, bulk data should be written to a pointer passed to the AFU, however, small quantities of data may be read from an MMIO area using ocxl_mmio_read32() and ocxl_mmio_read64().
10. Termination: ocxl_afu_close() will free all resources associated with an AFU handle.

Documentation

API documentation is generated using Doxygen in both HTML and man page format.

To build the documentation, run make docs.

An online version of the libocxl HTML documentation can be found at opencapi.github.io.

Development

The following environment variables may be set (to 1 or "YES") to assist with development:

LIBOCXL_INFO Print information about the LibOCXL build to stderr. This should be included in any bug reports.

LIBOCXL_TRACE_ALL Force AFU interaction trace messages to be emitted for all AFUs unless explicitly disabled.

LIBOCXL_VERBOSE_ERRORS_ALL Force verbose errors to be emitted for any failed LibOCXL calls, unless explicitly disabled.

Patches may be submitted via Github pull requests. Please prepare your patches by running make precommit before committing your work, and addressing any warnings & errors reported. Patches must compile cleanly with the latest stable version of GCC to be accepted.