HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING
Collaborating on AI and machine learning processors
ACHRONIX AND BITTWARE COLLABORATE ON A NEW FPGA DESIGNED FOR CLOUD, AI AND MACHINE LEARNING APPLICATIONS, WRITES ROBERT ROE
Increased demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications is driving
demand for accelerator devices that can support these new workflows. This is driving innovation in the accelerator market companies design products to meet these new demands. In October Bittware and Achronix announced a strategic collaboration with Achronix to introduce the S7t- VG6 PCIe accelerator product – a PCIe card sporting the new Achronix 7nm Speedster7t FPGA. This new generation of accelerator products offers a range of capabilities including low-cost and highly flexible GDDR6 memory that aims to offer HBM-class memory bandwidth, high- performance machine learning processors and a new 2D network-on-chip for high bandwidth and energy-efficient data movement. ‘BittWare has a 30-year track record
of successfully designing and deploying advanced processing technologies for demanding applications,’ said Jeff Milrod, president of BittWare. ‘Achronix is bringing fresh approaches, architectures and implementations to the FPGA market that we are excited to leverage with the introduction of our S7t card. We will now be able to offer leading memory bandwidths, as well as high-speed storage, network and host interfaces, while achieving new levels of price/performance and energy efficiency. I am confident that the innovations in the Speedster7t, combined with BittWare’s extensive experience and depth of accelerator card IP, will provide compelling platforms for data centre, cloud infrastructure and enterprise solutions.’ ‘We are delighted to collaborate with BittWare and the wider Molex group, to
10 Scientific Computing World December 2019/January 2020
launch the new VectorPath S7t accelerator card’ said Robert Blake, CEO, Achronix. ‘Market response to the new Achronix Speedster7t FPGA family has been overwhelmingly positive. In order to provide our customers with the ability to rapidly evaluate and go into volume production with the Speedster7t devices at card and server-level, we needed a partner with the deep design expertise and logistical scale needed to supply our growing global customer base. BittWare, as the leader in FPGA-based PCIe cards and servers, was a clear choice.’
Innovation for high-performance applications Designed for ML and AI applications this card could offer an alternative to Nvidia for these workloads by aligning the FPGA technologies with memory and networking interfaces that are more readily used by the wider HPC community. The card features a QSFP-DD (double-density) cage, and the board supports up to 1x 400GbE or 4x 100GbE using the 56G PAM4-enabled Speedster7t device. An additional QSFP port supports 2x 100GbE, and a 4x OCuLink connector supports NVMe attached storage. Sixteen channels of GDDR6 graphics DRAM handle high- bandwidth memory requirements, providing up to 512GB/s. The increased focus on memory-
intensive applications and networking options in this card make it clear it is designed to tackle high-end computing problems that demand performance such as cloud or ML and AI. Combining these features with reprogrammable logic and modern memory and networking interfaces provides a more easy to use FPGA design that the company hopes can
”Coupling this new product to the Molex organisation we can take this product to a global customer base”
drive new users to this technology. Steve Mensor, VP of sales and marketing and Achronix commented: ‘We worked together collaboratively to design this product, it is targeted at accelerated edge and cloud computing applications. It is intended to be a high-volume product for enterprise applications. ‘All of the compiler tools from Achronix
as well as all of the board-level tools from Bittware that make it a complete product so companies that are new to this will be able to jump in right away and start designing accelerator type applications very quickly,’ added Mensor. ‘It was a partnership that was formed over the last year or so as a collaboration of these two companies to build this product.’ Craig Petrie, VP of marketing at Bittware,
part of the Molex Group, highlighted the partnership between the two companies and the benefits of being part of the Molex group of companies. ‘We are an amalgamation of two
companies who focused on FPGA technology, Nallatech and Bittware. Those two companies have merged under the Molex Group, and we are the Molex arm for HPC and data centre processing with FPGA technology,’ said Petrie. ‘We have got a 30-year track record going back to the beginning of when FPGAs where invented. Coupling this new product g
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