ARC-210 · Processor Architecture · Practitioner
PCIe & System Interconnects — full syllabus
The fabric between CPU, memory and devices: PCIe generations, topology, and the bandwidth you actually get.
Who this course is for
Driver, platform and hardware-adjacent engineers who need to understand the fabric between CPU, memory and devices well enough to debug it.
Prerequisites
- Linux command line and basic device concepts
- C and hexadecimal literacy
- No prior PCIe protocol knowledge required
Course outline
Day 1 — The link and the topology
- PCIe Gen3/4/5: lanes, encoding (128b/130b) and realistic per-direction throughput
- Root complexes, switches, bridges and enumeration
- Bus/device/function addressing
- Walking the topology with lspci -tv and /sys/bus/pci
- The lane math: predicting achievable bandwidth before you measure it
Day 2 — Configuration space and the software view
- Configuration space layout and the ECAM access mechanism
- BARs and MMIO: how a device gets its address windows
- Capabilities lists and how to walk them
- MSI/MSI-X interrupt delivery
- Reading lspci -vvv and setpci output; what the kernel does during enumeration
Day 3 — Transfers, peers and performance
- DMA and how devices actually move memory
- TLPs, flow control and ordering rules at a working level
- Peer-to-peer transfers between devices
- The IOMMU's place in the path
- Diagnosing link degradation: negotiated versus capable speed and width
Hands-on labs
- Lab: walk an unfamiliar machine's PCIe topology with lspci -tv and sysfs and produce a labelled fabric diagram
- Lab: decode a device's configuration space with lspci -xxxx and setpci: BARs, capabilities and MSI-X tables
- Lab: check negotiated link speed and width against capability with lspci -vv and explain any downgrade found
- Lab: measure device-to-host bandwidth on a real device (NVMe or NIC) and compare it against the lane math
- Lab: inspect IOMMU groups and DMA-remapping state under /sys/kernel/iommu_groups on a suitably configured system
Capstone project
Produce a platform interconnect dossier for a supplied (or your own) server: a full PCIe topology map, a per-device negotiated-versus-capable link audit, a BAR and interrupt-mechanism inventory, and a measured bandwidth check on one device — closing with the topology facts most likely to matter for performance, each tied to the command output that established it.
What you leave with
- Fluency with lspci, setpci and the sysfs PCI tree
- The lane and encoding math to predict realistic throughput
- Configuration-space decoding skills for any device
- A topology-first method for approaching unfamiliar platforms
Upcoming dates
| Dates | Where | Seats | Early bird | Regular | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Oct – 27 Oct 20263 full days | RiyadhIn person · KAFD Conference Centre | 11 of 14 | — | SAR 7,880 | |
| 25 Oct – 27 Oct 20263 full days | Kuwait CityIn person · Al Hamra Tower | 6 of 14 | — | KWD 650 | |
| 1 Nov – 3 Nov 20263 full days | MuscatIn person · Knowledge Oasis Muscat | 11 of 14 | — | OMR 810 | |
| 8 Nov – 15 Nov 20266 half-days | Gulf bandLive online · 09:00–13:00 GMT+3 | 9 of 20 | US$1,350until 9 Oct | ||
| 9 Nov – 11 Nov 20263 full days | OttawaIn person · Kanata North Tech Park | 6 of 14 | CAD 2,570until 10 Oct | ||
| 9 Nov – 11 Nov 20263 full days | TorontoIn person · MaRS Discovery District | 11 of 14 | CAD 2,570until 10 Oct | ||
| 9 Nov – 16 Nov 20266 half-days | Europe bandLive online · 09:00–13:00 CET | 14 of 20 | US$1,350until 10 Oct | ||
| 16 Nov – 18 Nov 20263 full days | LondonIn person · Shoreditch Works | 6 of 14 | GBP 1,480until 17 Oct | ||
| 16 Nov – 23 Nov 20266 half-days | Americas bandLive online · 13:00–17:00 ET | 3 of 20 | US$1,350until 17 Oct | ||
| 23 Nov – 25 Nov 20263 full days | BerlinIn person · Factory Görlitzer Park | 11 of 14 | EUR 1,740until 24 Oct |
Book a seat, or bring this course to your team
Seats can be reserved online; private delivery runs on-site or live online, adapted to your stack.
Questions about fit or prerequisites? Email hello@kernelsystems.academy. To save this syllabus, print this page to PDF from your browser.