4. The cloudFPGA Sphere

The cloudFPGA Sphere or cFSphere is what constitutes the core of a cloudFPGA system. It is composed of several software components, each of them being provided as a standalone cF repository.

• The cloudFPGA Development Kit (cFDK) provides all the design files that are necessary to instantiate a cloudFPGA SHELL once a Shell-Role architecture has been chosen by the user.

  • The cFDK is provided as a cloudFPGA repository (cFDK Repo) and the documentation of its API is available in Doxygen style (cFDK Dox)

• The cloudFPGA Resource Manager (cFRM) is a software component for acquiring, distributing, configuring and operating our stand-alone network-attached FPGAs in the DC infrastructure. This is a complex 3-tier hierarchical architecture [Ringlein-2019] for which we provide the following two RESTful web APIs for a user to interact with:

  • The cloudFPGA Support Package (cFSP) is a software library for accessing the control and the data path of a cloudFPGA instance. The cFSP is provided as a cloudFPGA repository (cFSP Repo).

  • The cloudFPGA REST (cFREST) is a graphical web API for the user to access the features provided by the cFRM. This API is available as a Swagger UI with a look and feel similar to this screenshot.

• The cloudFPGA Create (cFCreate) is a framework to assist a user during the creation and the update of a cloudFPGA project. It is also provided as a cloudFPGA repository (cFCreate Rep)

For more information on these components, please visit the documentation of the corresponding repositories.

• 4.1. cFDK
  • 4.1.1. Introduction
  • 4.1.2. The cF Module
  • 4.1.3. The cF Shell
    • 4.1.3.1. The Shell-Role-Architecture
    • 4.1.3.2. The cF Project
    • 4.1.3.3. How to create a cloudFPGA Project
    • 4.1.3.4. Typical cFp file structure
• 4.2. cFCreate
  • 4.2.1. Requirements
    • 4.2.1.1. Setup your Virtualenv
  • 4.2.2. Usage
    • 4.2.2.1. 1. Create new cloudFPGA project (cFp)
    • 4.2.2.2. 2. Update an existing cFp
    • 4.2.2.3. 3. Add a cloudFPGA addon (cFa) to an existing cFp
  • 4.2.3. Structure of a cFp
  • 4.2.4. Build a cFp
  • 4.2.5. Git integration
    • 4.2.5.1. Push new cFp to a git repository
    • 4.2.5.2. cFDK as git submodule
  • 4.2.6. sra tools as bash alias
  • 4.2.7. Mantle support
  • 4.2.8. Known Limitations/Bugs
• 4.3. cFSP
  • 4.3.1. Requirements
  • 4.3.2. Installation
    • 4.3.2.1. Installation through github
    • 4.3.2.2. Installation through PyPi
  • 4.3.3. Getting Started
    • 4.3.3.1. Contents
    • 4.3.3.2. Getting help
    • 4.3.3.3. Setting up the credentials file for a user
    • 4.3.3.4. Show the credentials of a user
    • 4.3.3.5. Load new credentials for a user
    • 4.3.3.6. Upload an image
    • 4.3.3.7. Upload an image for partial reconfiguration
    • 4.3.3.8. Get an image
    • 4.3.3.9. Create a cluster
    • 4.3.3.10. Create a multi-node cluster
    • 4.3.3.11. Update the nodes of a cluster
    • 4.3.3.12. Get a cluster
    • 4.3.3.13. Extend a cluster
    • 4.3.3.14. Reduce a cluster
    • 4.3.3.15. Restart a cluster
    • 4.3.3.16. Debug a cluster
    • 4.3.3.17. Delete a cluster
    • 4.3.3.18. Create an instance
    • 4.3.3.19. Get an instance
    • 4.3.3.20. Restart an instance
    • 4.3.3.21. Debug an instance
    • 4.3.3.22. Delete an instance
    • 4.3.3.23. Debug using the flight recorder data
    • 4.3.3.24. Use cFSP as a Python module
  • 4.3.4. Update of the python Python API