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Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

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Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

#11
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These chips usually cost $1k-$2k when bought new individually from the manufacturer

Are we talking about physical products or cloud services?

There’s zero cloud service in the article, only physical boards decommissioned by a hyperscaler. Asking about cloud services tells me you only read the title.

Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

#12
post #10

Reminds me how Alibaba innovated in database space with a cluster of FPGAs doing LSM compaction with custom MySQL storage engine - https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3299869.3314041 Basically they achieved massive improvements in throughput and latencies vs RocksDB, for some operations even an order of magnitude. They even offered this as a service, but eventually pulled out. Not sure if they are still using it, but…

AWS was using in house hardware query acceleration in redshift a few years back https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aqua-advanced-query-acc.... I dont know how much attention its getting (or performance its bringing) since AWS started focusing more in P&L the past year or two.

Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

#13
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we talking about physical products or cloud services?

There’s zero cloud service in the article, only physical boards decommissioned by a hyperscaler. Asking about cloud services tells me you only read the title.

I read the title and was confused why the article did not match it.

Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

#14
If you are interested in FPGA PCIe or PCI cards there are also a lot of Gidel boards available second hand. ProcSpark/ProcStar etc. The official software is proprietary and they often contain multiple FPGA devices so there is again an exercise working out the pinouts etc if you want to simply use them with Quartus. I got one with a massive Stratix IV on.

A Kintel UltraScale+ is quite a prize though, really nice write up.

Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

#15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At work we always have 20-30x FT2232H on stock. They are super useful - they speak GPIO, I2C, SPI, parallel FIFO, etc. And their pyFTDI Python lib is great.

Just be careful as the counterfeit FTDI chips can have bad internal regulators etc. (Usually those small Red UART and GPIO breakout hobby PCB.) Usually better to use the vendor supplied JTAG tools, or build your own with known good silicon. Recovering FPGA hardware is always a mixed bag of what IP and documentation is available to bring up the board. Looks like nice silicon though. =3

Not all FTDI series are faked. Only the most popular FT232 as far as I know.

Same for ST. Only the STM32F103 is a well known bad actor in the market.

Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

#19
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s zero cloud service in the article, only physical boards decommissioned by a hyperscaler. Asking about cloud services tells me you only read the title.

I read the title and was confused why the article did not match it.

Cloud should have been title-cased (they make this mistake almost every time in the article), they bought an FPGA decommissioned by Alibaba Cloud, the subsidiary.

Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just be careful as the counterfeit FTDI chips can have bad internal regulators etc. (Usually those small Red UART and GPIO breakout hobby PCB.) Usually better to use the vendor supplied JTAG tools, or build your own with known good silicon. Recovering FPGA hardware is always a mixed bag of what IP and documentation is available to bring up the board. Looks like nice silicon though. =3

Not all FTDI series are faked. Only the most popular FT232 as far as I know. Same for ST. Only the STM32F103 is a well known bad actor in the market.

In my experience the f103 clones fix silicon bugs and some even have improved peripherals (like i2c)
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