Home > Communication Service Provider Solutions > Telecom Multicloud Foundation > Red Hat > Guides > Red Hat Open Shift Container Platform Guides > Deployment Guide: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Reference Architecture for Telecom > Enabling and using the Intel N3000 Accelerator
The functionality of the Intel N3000 accelerator was tested and validated on PowerEdge XE2420 servers.
To use the Intel N3000 accelerator in OpenShift, the real-time kernel must be installed on nodes with the accelerator. For information about installation of the real-time kernel, see to Performance profile deployment for low latency.
Unless specified, the following steps are performed in the vran-acceleration-operators project, which can be created by running the oc new-project vran-acceleration-operators command.
Use the Custom Resources (CRs) as defined here to install the OpenNESS Operator for Intel FPGA PAC N3000 (Programming). This Operator is used to flash FPGA images and update NIC firmware.
Use the Custom Resources (CRs) as defined here to install the OpenNESS Operator for Wireless FEC Accelerators. This Operator is used to split the FEC accelerator physical function into virtual functions, which can be provided to pods.
Run the oc get pods -n vran-acceleration-operators command to verify that the Operators have been successfully installed and all pods are running.
To update NIC firmware or flash the N3000 FPGA image, the required firmware orFPGA image must be available on an HTTP server accessible by the cluster. A sample CR for this process is provided here.
Note: Firmware can be obtained here. The latest firmware that must be used is 7.30. Due to an issue, upgrades to firmware versions later than 7.30 might cause the firmware upgrade to fail. Rolling back to a prior firmware version might also fail.
A sample CR is provided here for configuring accelerator virtual functions. When the CR has been applied and is successful, nodes have the intel_fec_5g resource that can now be allocated to pods.
A sample pod CR is provided here to demonstrate how N3000 VFs can be provided to pods for use by an application.
For more information, see the following documentation: