We need to use an Intel Arria or Stratix FPGA due to the 'config bypass' feature we use to allow QEMU to implement its own PCIe config registers. Xilinx, Lattice and Cyclone FPGAs don't support this as far as I can tell.
> virtual environment consisting of QEMU, LINUX and GHDL glued alltogether by a small TCP based protocol. It allows PCIE devices to be implemented as standard userland processes, answering actual PCIE requests coming from
QEMU. It supports PCIE configuration headers, requests, memory read/write operations and MSI. Different abstractions are provided to simplify the implementation of PCIE devices.
> RIFFA (Reusable Integration Framework for FPGA Accelerators) is a simple framework for communicating data from a host CPU to a FPGA via a PCI Express bus. The framework requires a PCIe enabled workstation and a FPGA on a board with a PCIe connector. RIFFA supports Windows and Linux, Altera and Xilinx, with bindings for C/C++, Python, MATLAB and Java. On the software side there are two main functions: data send and data receive ... Users can communicate with FPGA IP cores by writing only a few lines of code.
We're working on porting to a cheaper FPGA-on-PCIe board, but it's still ~EUR 800.