ACADEMIA

The OpenFPGA Consortium has announced that it has become an incorporated non-profit organization. OpenFPGA is an international effort established to advance the use of reconfigurable computing technology including Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). Under development for more than a year, the corporation’s driving goal is to accelerate the adoption of low-power, high performance FPGA technology into mainstream production and supercomputing applications by reducing development costs and improving application portability. To support this goal, OpenFPGA objectives encourage broad participation and international collaboration, characterize and address challenges in reconfigurable computing, improve best practices, pursue standardization, and collectively help shape the future for reconfigurable computing across the globe. International interest was confirmed during a workshop hosted in Springfield, Ohio, focusing on promoting FPGA technologies for the high-end computing application market during the fall of 2004. The OpenFPGA Consortium commenced in February 2005 when an ad hoc steering group was formed, composed of international representatives from multiple organizations, diverse application areas, and with academic, commercial and government interests. The steering group proved critical in establishing the direction for new non-profit efforts. This next crucial phase of becoming a corporation will allow OpenFPGA to build an international leadership position within the HPC community. OpenFPGA has selected an outstanding board of directors, bringing together essential expertise across several sectors that are critical to realizing the vision for the future of reconfigurable supercomputing. Following is a list of the new OpenFPGA board of directors: President, Eric Stahlberg (Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), Senior Systems Manager) Vice President, Keith Underwood (Sandia National Laboratories, Senior Member Technical Staff) Secretary, Kevin Roy (The University of Manchester, Head Computation Science and Engineering Group) Treasurer, Kevin Wohlever (OSC-Springfield, Director of Operations) Directors at Large, Thomas Steinke (Zuse Institute Berlin, Lead, Group on Alignment and Threading on Massively Parallel Computers), Karen Tomko (University of Cincinnati, Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science), Malachy Devlin (Nallatech, Senior VP and CTO), Jon Huppenthal (SRC Computers, Founder and CEO), and Aussie Schnore (GE Global Research, Lead, Reconfigurable and Non-conventional and Computing) OpenFPGA steering group members include, Cray, Inc., General Electric Global Research, Koan Corporation, Mitrionics Inc., Nallatech, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, NCI-Advanced Biomedical Computing Center, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Sandia National Laboratories, Silicon Graphics, Inc., SRC Computers, Inc., Starbridge Systems, Inc., OSC, the University of Cincinnati, The University of Manchester, the University of South Carolina, the University of Toledo, George Washington University, Riken and Zuse Institute Berlin. For further information, please visit www.openfpga.org. Here you will find information on working groups that have been established in key areas, director biographies, FAQs, and general information on FPGA technologies for high performance computing.