6. Intel(R) ACC100 and ACC101 5G/4G FEC Poll Mode Drivers

The BBDEV ACC100 5G/4G FEC poll mode driver (PMD) supports an implementation of a VRAN FEC wireless acceleration function. This device is also known as Mount Bryce. The BBDEV ACC101, also known as Mount Cirrus, is a derivative device from Mount Bryce with functional and capacity improvements but still with the same exposed BBDEV capabilities.

6.1. Features

ACC100 and ACC101 5G/4G FEC PMDs support the following features:

  • LDPC Encode in the DL (5GNR)
  • LDPC Decode in the UL (5GNR)
  • Turbo Encode in the DL (4G)
  • Turbo Decode in the UL (4G)
  • 16 VFs per PF (physical device)
  • Maximum of 128 queues per VF
  • PCIe Gen-3 x16 Interface
  • MSI
  • SR-IOV

ACC100 and ACC101 5G/4G FEC PMDs support the following BBDEV capabilities:

  • For the LDPC encode operation:
    • RTE_BBDEV_LDPC_CRC_24B_ATTACH : set to attach CRC24B to CB(s)
    • RTE_BBDEV_LDPC_RATE_MATCH : if set then do not do Rate Match bypass
    • RTE_BBDEV_LDPC_INTERLEAVER_BYPASS : if set then bypass interleaver
  • For the LDPC decode operation:
    • RTE_BBDEV_LDPC_CRC_TYPE_24B_CHECK : check CRC24B from CB(s)
    • RTE_BBDEV_LDPC_ITERATION_STOP_ENABLE : disable early termination
    • RTE_BBDEV_LDPC_CRC_TYPE_24B_DROP : drops CRC24B bits appended while decoding
    • RTE_BBDEV_LDPC_HQ_COMBINE_IN_ENABLE : provides an input for HARQ combining
    • RTE_BBDEV_LDPC_HQ_COMBINE_OUT_ENABLE : provides an input for HARQ combining
    • RTE_BBDEV_LDPC_INTERNAL_HARQ_MEMORY_IN_ENABLE : HARQ memory input is internal
    • RTE_BBDEV_LDPC_INTERNAL_HARQ_MEMORY_OUT_ENABLE : HARQ memory output is internal
    • RTE_BBDEV_LDPC_INTERNAL_HARQ_MEMORY_LOOPBACK : loopback data to/from HARQ memory
    • RTE_BBDEV_LDPC_INTERNAL_HARQ_MEMORY_FILLERS : HARQ memory includes the fillers bits
    • RTE_BBDEV_LDPC_DEC_SCATTER_GATHER : supports scatter-gather for input/output data
    • RTE_BBDEV_LDPC_HARQ_6BIT_COMPRESSION : supports compression of the HARQ input/output
    • RTE_BBDEV_LDPC_LLR_COMPRESSION : supports LLR input compression
  • For the turbo encode operation:
    • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_CRC_24B_ATTACH : set to attach CRC24B to CB(s)
    • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_RATE_MATCH : if set then do not do Rate Match bypass
    • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_ENC_INTERRUPTS : set for encoder dequeue interrupts
    • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_RV_INDEX_BYPASS : set to bypass RV index
    • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_ENC_SCATTER_GATHER : supports scatter-gather for input/output data
  • For the turbo decode operation:
    • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_CRC_TYPE_24B : check CRC24B from CB(s)
    • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_SUBBLOCK_DEINTERLEAVE : perform subblock de-interleave
    • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_DEC_INTERRUPTS : set for decoder dequeue interrupts
    • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_NEG_LLR_1_BIT_IN : set if negative LLR encoder i/p is supported
    • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_POS_LLR_1_BIT_IN : set if positive LLR encoder i/p is supported
    • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_DEC_TB_CRC_24B_KEEP : keep CRC24B bits appended while decoding
    • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_DEC_CRC_24B_DROP : option to drop the code block CRC after decoding
    • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_EARLY_TERMINATION : set early termination feature
    • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_DEC_SCATTER_GATHER : supports scatter-gather for input/output data
    • RTE_BBDEV_TURBO_HALF_ITERATION_EVEN : set half iteration granularity
  • PMD-specific build flags: The ACC100 PMD includes some optional build flags which may be used for troubleshooting. Recommended build configuration is for these to be kept as default. - RTE_LIBRTE_BBDEV_SKIP_VALIDATE: option to skip API input validation. Recommended value is to keep the validation enabled by default as a protection for negative scenarios at a cost of some cycles spent to enforce these checks. - ACC100_EXT_MEM: default option with memory external to CPU on the PCIe card DDR itself. Alternative build option will use CPU memory (not recommended).

6.2. Installation

Section 3 of the DPDK manual provides instructions on installing and compiling DPDK.

DPDK requires hugepages to be configured as detailed in section 2 of the DPDK manual. The bbdev test application has been tested with a configuration 40 x 1GB hugepages. The hugepage configuration of a server may be examined using:

grep Huge* /proc/meminfo

6.3. Initialization

When the device first powers up, its PCI Physical Functions (PF) can be listed through these commands for ACC100 (device id 0d5c) and ACC101 (device id 57c4) respectively:

sudo lspci -vd8086:0d5c
sudo lspci -vd8086:57c4

The physical and virtual functions are compatible with Linux UIO drivers: vfio_pci and igb_uio. However, in order to work the 5G/4G FEC device first needs to be bound to one of these linux drivers through DPDK.

For more details on how to bind the PF device and create VF devices, see Binding and Unbinding Network Ports to/from the Kernel Modules.

6.3.1. Configure the VFs through PF

The PCI virtual functions must be configured before working or getting assigned to VMs/Containers. The configuration involves allocating the number of hardware queues, priorities, load balance, bandwidth and other settings necessary for the device to perform FEC functions.

This configuration needs to be executed at least once after reboot or PCI FLR and can be achieved by using the functions rte_acc10x_configure(), which sets up the parameters defined in the compatible acc100_conf structure.

6.4. Test Application

BBDEV provides a test application, test-bbdev.py and range of test data for testing the functionality of the device, depending on the device’s capabilities.

For more details on how to use the test application, see dpdk-test-bbdev Application.

6.4.1. Test Vectors

In addition to the simple LDPC decoder and LDPC encoder tests, bbdev also provides a range of additional tests under the test_vectors folder, which may be useful. The results of these tests will depend on the device 5G/4G FEC capabilities which may cause some testcases to be skipped, but no failure should be reported.

6.4.2. Alternate Baseband Device configuration tool

On top of the embedded configuration feature supported in test-bbdev using “- -init-device” option mentioned above, there is also a tool available to perform that device configuration using a companion application. The pf_bb_config application notably enables then to run bbdev-test from the VF and not only limited to the PF as captured above.

See for more details: https://github.com/intel/pf-bb-config

Specifically for the BBDEV ACC100 PMD, the command below can be used:

./pf_bb_config ACC100 -c acc100/acc100_config_vf_5g.cfg
./test-bbdev.py -e="-c 0xff0 -a${VF_PCI_ADDR}" -c validation -n 64 -b 32 -l 1 -v ./ldpc_dec_default.data

Specifically for the BBDEV ACC101 PMD, the command below can be used:

./pf_bb_config ACC101 -c acc101/acc101_config_2vf_4g5g.cfg
./test-bbdev.py -e="-c 0xff0 -a${VF_PCI_ADDR}" -c validation -n 64 -b 32 -l 1 -v ./ldpc_dec_default.data