FPGAs Ride HP’s Moonshot

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1326707&_mc=RSS_EET_EDT

by oconnor0 • 11 years ago

16 2 11 years ago

TD-Linux• 11 years ago

The company claims the 45W board delivers 100 times the performance of an x86 server while using one percent of its power.

This is the most ridiculous claim I have seen yet for FPGAs.

I've used FPGAs for a long time, and IMO they don't make sense at all for compute. They are for when you need ASIC like features but can't afford spinning one. Reconfiguration time is often several seconds. They burn 10x the power of an equivalent ASIC.

Some FPGAs support partial reconfiguration now, so you can do some interesting things with changing the logic at runtime. But it's still slow, and all of your logic has to be prepared ahead of time - "compilation" times for most FPGA tools are into the hours.

kainolophobia• 11 years ago

"Its secret sauce is its Carte compiler that automatically turns users’ C-level code into FPGA-readable firmware, eliminating the need for often complex Verilog-level FPGA programming tools. The FPGA also lets users quickly change code as workloads shift."

FPGAs Ride HP’s Moonshot

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