Xilinx, Altera showing off FPGA coprocessors at IDF

While Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) haven't benefited from a good deal of buzz just yet, things could be taking a turn, as both Xilinx and Altera caught a few eyes at IDF. We've already seen the unique, albeit highly specific chips in a supercomputer, but the dedicated coprocessor / accelerator modules could be landing beside your Intel Xeon CPU. Essentially, the devices plug "directly into the processor socket of dual- or quad-socket servers" in order to provide "high performance application acceleration ranging from 10x to 100x compared to processors alone, while simultaneously reducing overall system power consumption." The modules act as targeted CPUs, effectively computing very specific tasks in a much more efficient fashion than a general microprocessor can alone, which could boost the speed of scientific, financial, and life science applications that rely on very particular calculations. Of course, mainstream adoption still has quite a ways to go, but the quicker we get dedicated physics and AI coprocessors to go along with these snazzy new GPUs, the happier (and poorer) we'll be.

[Via RobotSkirts]
Read - Altera demonstrates FPGA at IDF
Read - Xilinx demonstrates FPGA at IDF

[Justin @ Apr 23rd 2007 9:29AM]

You're missing the point: FPGAs are field programmable. What I'd assume is that in software you'd be able to define your program and configure it for work. Seems like this would find a very nice home in research applications.

This isn't entirely new. National Instruments has had FPGA on many of their devices for some time. You can program the FPGA using LabVIEW code. http://www.ni.com/fpga/

[moneill @ Apr 23rd 2007 11:24AM]

"hasn't benefited from a good deal of buzz just yet" ???

FPGA's are everywhere and have been around for over 20 years. You don't seem to know what you're talking about. But that's OK, neither do most of the other readers (see paltry comment tally).

[Jimmy @ Apr 23rd 2007 12:24PM]

If these FPGAs will fit into a standardized ZIF socket then there could actually be much more widespread adoption. You could boot a Quad processor system on a single or multi-core X86 or X86-64 processor and have 3 other FPGAs plugged into the other three CPU slots. There are lots of possibilities for a setup like this.

[Sean @ Apr 23rd 2007 4:05PM]

Actually last I heard the Intel solution was going to be PCI-express based whilst the AMD system would have a socket and connect via hyper-transport. Double check me, but I think that's right.

[slim @ Apr 28th 2007 8:24PM]

Go here and click on the technology button. It will help you understand

http://www.srccomp.com/

SRC has a lot of patents on this stuff. I wonder if ALTR and XLNX will be in a fight with them.