F29 Self-Contained Change: Basic FPGA Support

[Ben Cotton]

== Summary ==
A number of devices like Xilinx ZYNQ based devices such as the
96boards Ultra96 and the Intel based UP² have onboard FPGAs. FPGA
manager is a vendor-neutral framework that has been upstream in the
kernel since 4.4. This is the initial support for FPGAs in Fedora
using open source vendor agnostic tools.

== Owner ==
* Name: Peter Robinson
* Email: pbrobinson at fedora project dot org

== Detailed Description ==

The use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is growing.
There's a number types of compute power used to drive this, the
standard system CPU can handle basic work, but for more powerful needs
this workload gets moved to auxiliary processors such as GPGPU, FPGAs
or Neural Network processors. This will add initial support for FPGAs
in Fedora using the Linux Kernel support which currently supports
Altera,  Zynq, Lattice and other FPGAs. The use of FPGAs with Open
Source software is improving and this is the beginning of ensuring
that can be consumed in Fedora as easily as possible.

== Benefit to Fedora ==

The general purpose use of FPGAs is growing in the tech industry,
especially in AI and Machine Learning usecases for IoT and numerous
other places where special purpose workload acceleration is needed.
This will help developing these workloads on top of Fedora for use
across the distribution.

== Scope ==
* Proposal owners: Kernel and userspace changes

* Other developers: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

== Upgrade/compatibility impact ==
There is no impact to upgrades or platforms that don't contain FPGAs.

== How To Test ==
Testing will require hardware with a supported FPGA. The initial
devices for this will be a 96boards Ultra96 or a UP² with a Altera
FPGA. Other devices will be supported and testing will be welcome.

The process for testing will be linked to here.

== User Experience ==
Currently the Fedora support for FPGAs is basically non existent.
There's currently a few open tools for specific FPGAs. This is the
beginning of improving this with the intention of having a uniform as
possible  user experience across FPGAs as is currently possible.


-- 
Ben Cotton
Fedora Program Manager
TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis

[Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 05:26:08PM -0400, Ben Cotton wrote:
>  == Summary ==
>  A number of devices like Xilinx ZYNQ based devices such as the
>  96boards Ultra96 and the Intel based UP² have onboard FPGAs. FPGA
>  manager is a vendor-neutral framework that has been upstream in the
>  kernel since 4.4. This is the initial support for FPGAs in Fedora
>  using open source vendor agnostic tools.
>  
>  == Owner ==
>  * Name: Peter Robinson
>  * Email: pbrobinson at fedora project dot org
>  
>  == Detailed Description ==
>  
>  The use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is growing.
>  There's a number types of compute power used to drive this, the
>  standard system CPU can handle basic work, but for more powerful needs
>  this workload gets moved to auxiliary processors such as GPGPU, FPGAs
>  or Neural Network processors. This will add initial support for FPGAs
>  in Fedora using the Linux Kernel support which currently supports
>  Altera,  Zynq, Lattice and other FPGAs. The use of FPGAs with Open
>  Source software is improving and this is the beginning of ensuring
>  that can be consumed in Fedora as easily as possible.
>  
>  == Benefit to Fedora ==
>  
>  The general purpose use of FPGAs is growing in the tech industry,
>  especially in AI and Machine Learning usecases for IoT and numerous
>  other places where special purpose workload acceleration is needed.
>  This will help developing these workloads on top of Fedora for use
>  across the distribution.
>  
>  == Scope ==
>  * Proposal owners: Kernel and userspace changes 
Hm, what is the actual scope of this change? Summary, Detailed Desc.,
and Benefit to Fedora all talk about FPGA in general, but not about
what will change in Fedora.

Zbyszek

[Thomas Daede]

On 07/18/2018 02:26 PM, Ben Cotton wrote:
>  == User Experience ==
>  Currently the Fedora support for FPGAs is basically non existent.
>  There's currently a few open tools for specific FPGAs. This is the
>  beginning of improving this with the intention of having a uniform as
>  possible  user experience across FPGAs as is currently possible. 
There is zero overlap between the open tools for FPGAs and the FPGAs
supported by the kernel FPGA manager right now. You should limit the
scope of this change to the FPGAs you actually want to support.

I wouldn't actually mind the open tools getting packaged (icestrom,
yosys, arachne-pnr, abc, tinyprog) but you should be clear if you're
doing that or not.

[Justin Forbes]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 4:26 PM, Ben Cotton <bcotton(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:

>  == Summary ==
>  A number of devices like Xilinx ZYNQ based devices such as the
>  96boards Ultra96 and the Intel based UP² have onboard FPGAs. FPGA
>  manager is a vendor-neutral framework that has been upstream in the
>  kernel since 4.4. This is the initial support for FPGAs in Fedora
>  using open source vendor agnostic tools.
>
>  == Owner ==
>  * Name: Peter Robinson
>  * Email: pbrobinson at fedora project dot org
>
>  == Detailed Description ==
>
>  The use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is growing.
>  There's a number types of compute power used to drive this, the
>  standard system CPU can handle basic work, but for more powerful needs
>  this workload gets moved to auxiliary processors such as GPGPU, FPGAs
>  or Neural Network processors. This will add initial support for FPGAs
>  in Fedora using the Linux Kernel support which currently supports
>  Altera,  Zynq, Lattice and other FPGAs. The use of FPGAs with Open
>  Source software is improving and this is the beginning of ensuring
>  that can be consumed in Fedora as easily as possible.
>
>  == Benefit to Fedora ==
>
>  The general purpose use of FPGAs is growing in the tech industry,
>  especially in AI and Machine Learning usecases for IoT and numerous
>  other places where special purpose workload acceleration is needed.
>  This will help developing these workloads on top of Fedora for use
>  across the distribution.
>
>  == Scope ==
>  * Proposal owners: Kernel and userspace changes
>  
Is there a list of the proposed kernel changes anywhere?


>  * Other developers: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
>
>  == Upgrade/compatibility impact ==
>  There is no impact to upgrades or platforms that don't contain FPGAs.
>
>  == How To Test ==
>  Testing will require hardware with a supported FPGA. The initial
>  devices for this will be a 96boards Ultra96 or a UP² with a Altera
>  FPGA. Other devices will be supported and testing will be welcome.
>
>  The process for testing will be linked to here.
>
>  == User Experience ==
>  Currently the Fedora support for FPGAs is basically non existent.
>  There's currently a few open tools for specific FPGAs. This is the
>  beginning of improving this with the intention of having a uniform as
>  possible  user experience across FPGAs as is currently possible.
>
>
>  --
>  Ben Cotton
>  Fedora Program Manager
>  TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis
>  _______________________________________________
>  devel mailing list -- devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html
>  List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
>  List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.
>  fedoraproject.org/message/PNQJ3E4GC4AITL3VMJ5OVZK2MGW2TTLL/
>

[Peter Robinson]

On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 6:40 PM, Justin Forbes <jmforbes(a)linuxtx.org&gt; wrote:
>  On Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 4:26 PM, Ben Cotton <bcotton(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
> >
> > == Summary ==
> > A number of devices like Xilinx ZYNQ based devices such as the
> > 96boards Ultra96 and the Intel based UP² have onboard FPGAs. FPGA
> > manager is a vendor-neutral framework that has been upstream in the
> > kernel since 4.4. This is the initial support for FPGAs in Fedora
> > using open source vendor agnostic tools.
> >
> > == Owner ==
> > * Name: Peter Robinson
> > * Email: pbrobinson at fedora project dot org
> >
> > == Detailed Description ==
> >
> > The use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is growing.
> > There's a number types of compute power used to drive this, the
> > standard system CPU can handle basic work, but for more powerful needs
> > this workload gets moved to auxiliary processors such as GPGPU, FPGAs
> > or Neural Network processors. This will add initial support for FPGAs
> > in Fedora using the Linux Kernel support which currently supports
> > Altera,  Zynq, Lattice and other FPGAs. The use of FPGAs with Open
> > Source software is improving and this is the beginning of ensuring
> > that can be consumed in Fedora as easily as possible.
> >
> > == Benefit to Fedora ==
> >
> > The general purpose use of FPGAs is growing in the tech industry,
> > especially in AI and Machine Learning usecases for IoT and numerous
> > other places where special purpose workload acceleration is needed.
> > This will help developing these workloads on top of Fedora for use
> > across the distribution.
> >
> > == Scope ==
> > * Proposal owners: Kernel and userspace changes
>
>
>  Is there a list of the proposed kernel changes anywhere? 
Not yet, working on it, basically it will be enabling FPGA and the
associated options there.

>>
>>
>> * Other developers: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
>>
>> == Upgrade/compatibility impact ==
>> There is no impact to upgrades or platforms that don't contain FPGAs.
>>
>> == How To Test ==
>> Testing will require hardware with a supported FPGA. The initial
>> devices for this will be a 96boards Ultra96 or a UP² with a Altera
>> FPGA. Other devices will be supported and testing will be welcome.
>>
>> The process for testing will be linked to here.
>>
>> == User Experience ==
>> Currently the Fedora support for FPGAs is basically non existent.
>> There's currently a few open tools for specific FPGAs. This is the
>> beginning of improving this with the intention of having a uniform as
>> possible  user experience across FPGAs as is currently possible.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Ben Cotton
>> Fedora Program Manager
>> TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis
>> _______________________________________________
>> devel mailing list -- devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>> To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>> Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html
>> List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
>> List Archives:
>>
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[e-mail].o...
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> devel mailing list -- devel(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
> To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
> Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html
> List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
> List Archives:
>
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[e-mail].o...
>