Aurora ACK

Designed by Aaron Young

This repository contains a custom Aurora acknowledgment automatic repeat request design I created using VHDL for my PhD dissertation to make high-performance, robust, board-to-board communication possible via an Aurora 8b10b or an Aurora 64b66b channel. A detailed description of the design can be found in my dissertation, SNACC: The Scaled-up Neuromorphic Array Communications Controller, in Section 7.3.1. Aurora ACK implements a go-back-n protocol with aggressive retransmission and flood control.

Citing

If you use this repository, please cite my dissertation SNACC: The Scaled-up Neuromorphic Array Communications Controller.

Recommended Citation

Plain Text:

Young, Aaron Reed, "SNACC: The Scaled-up Neuromorphic Array Communications Controller. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2020.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/5843

Bibtex:

@PhdThesis{young_snacc,
    author      = {Aaron Reed Young},
    title       = {SNACC: The Scaled-up Neuromorphic Array Communications Controller},
    date        = {2020},
    institution = {University of Tennessee},
}

Usage

The Aurora ACK module sits between an application FIFO and the Aurora IP component to provide high-performance, error-free communication over an Aurora channel using multi-gigabit transceivers. Aurora ACK was designed generically such that different sized communication packets could be used. Preliminary support for variable length packets is also included, but a max packet size (or frame size) must be provided to build the internal send window memory memory. The all of the communication busses use the AXI4-Stream ARM AMBA protocol. The VHDL source files for this component can be found in src/. All of the VHDL files are needed for the design. The top-level entity is in src/aurora_ack.vhd. The component can be instantiate as follows.

aurora_ack_i : entity work.aurora_ack(Behavioral)
generic map (
    WORD_SIZE          => 64,
    FRAME_WIDTH        => 512,

    MAX_FLOOD          => 2,
    FLOOD_WAIT         => 100,
    NEW_PACKET_RESETS  => TRUE
)
port map (
    clk    => user_clk,
    rst_n  => reset_pcie_n,

    -- TX Stream Interface
    m_axi_tx_tdata          => ack_m_axi_tx_tdata_i,
    m_axi_tx_tvalid         => ack_m_axi_tx_tvalid_i,
    m_axi_tx_tready         => ack_m_axi_tx_tready_i,
    m_axi_tx_tkeep          => ack_m_axi_tx_tkeep_i,
    m_axi_tx_tlast          => ack_m_axi_tx_tlast_i,

    -- RX Stream Interface
    s_axi_rx_tdata          => ack_s_axi_rx_tdata_i,
    s_axi_rx_tkeep          => ack_s_axi_rx_tkeep_i,
    s_axi_rx_tvalid         => ack_s_axi_rx_tvalid_i,
    s_axi_rx_tlast          => ack_s_axi_rx_tlast_i,

    -- Send Stream Interface
    s_axi_send_tdata        => ack_s_axi_send_tdata_i,
    s_axi_send_tready       => ack_s_axi_send_tready_i,
    s_axi_send_tvalid       => ack_s_axi_send_tvalid_i,

    -- Receive Stream Interface
    m_axi_recv_tdata        => ack_m_axi_recv_tdata_i,
    m_axi_recv_tvalid       => ack_m_axi_recv_tvalid_i,
    m_axi_recv_tready       => ack_m_axi_recv_tready_i,

    -- Receive CRC
    crc_pass_fail_n         => crc_pass_fail_n_i,
    crc_valid               => crc_valid_i
);

The following table shows the customizable Aurora ACK generics.

Generic	Default Value	Description
WORD_SIZE	32	Size for each word used by Aurora. Supports word sizes of 32, 64, 128.
FRAME_WIDTH	512	Max size for each packet and also the Aurora frame size. Supports sizes which are a multiple of the word size.
MAX_FLOOD	2	Max number of retransmissions before waiting FLOOD_WAIT cycles. Supports any positive number.
FLOOD_WAIT	100	Number of cycles to wait after the MAX_FLOOD number of retransmissions. Supports any positive number.
NEW_PACKET_RESETS	TRUE	Does a new packet to send reset waiting for the FLOOD_WAIT time? If TRUE, the counter is reset. If false, the new packet is still sent, but then the flood wait continues.

In addition to the main behavioral architecture of Aurora ACK there are also three additional debugging and testing architectures included in the aurora_ack.vhd file. These architectures implement a passthough without retransmission, loopback which receives whatever is sent, and dev which discards what is sent and always receives packets filled with zeros.

Testbenches

Test benches for the various components can be found in the testbench folder. All of the testbenches were originally used with Xilinx Vivado, but must of the test benches can also be run with the open-source GHDL simulator. A Python 3 script is provided in scripts/ to make running the testbenches with GHDL easier. GHDL can also generate VCD waveform files which can be opened using the open-source GTKWave. The only testbench which cannot be ran with GHDL is aurora_ack_tb.vhd which uses an aurora_64b66b component with aurora ack to perform higher level testing. This testbench can be simulated with Vivado after first creating an Aurora component.