APPLICATIONS

XtremeData FPGA-based module to offer computing acceleration and significantly lower power consumption for Intel Xeon-based servers: Altera today announced that XtremeData has chosen the high-performance Stratix(R) III FPGA for their XD2000i plug-compatible FPGA co-processor module supporting Intel's front side bus (FSB). This high performance computing solution will supply additional processing power to Intel Xeon processor-based servers. The module plugs directly into the processor socket of dual- or quad-socket servers. It will provide high performance application acceleration ranging from 10x to 100x compared to processors alone, while simultaneously reducing overall system power consumption. "The Stratix III family will offer attractive options to address the requirements of high performance computing market applications," said Ravi Chandran, CEO of XtremeData. "The key to FPGA acceleration is parallelism, so the availability of hardware resources within the Stratix III architecture, like multipliers, barrel shifters and memory, are important factors." The XD2000i is pin-compatible with and plugs directly into an Intel Xeon processor socket using the low-latency FSB interconnect. The XtremeData module integrates FPGA co-processing in a simple, elegant manner, with minimal disruption to the data-center infrastructure. It supports high-density form factors, including 1U servers, server blades and Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA) platforms. "Application developers across computing sectors such as financial analysis, medical imaging, data analytics, text searches, network security and scientific computing will have a 'plug and play' solution for adding processing performance to their Intel-based systems," said Dr. Dileep Bhandarkar, director of Advanced Architectures for Intel Corporation. "Intel is creating a total ecosystem for accelerators, including an Intel QuickAssist Technology Accelerator Abstraction layer that is hardware independent and enables rapid creation of new high performance applications." An example of an Altera-based FPGA co-processor module is being showcased in Intel booth #162 and #164 at the Intel Developer Forum today in Beijing, China. "The XtremeData co-processor module will use a high performance Stratix III FPGA-based solution that enables existing Intel Xeon applications to be accelerated while delivering significant cost, power and space savings," said Dr. Misha Burich, Altera's senior vice president of research and development. "When these XtremeData co-processor modules are installed into commercial off-the-shelf CPU platforms, the algorithmic parts of applications can be substantially accelerated via parallelization and pipelining."