Is anyone aware of any examples of FPGAs used to implement neural nets or other connectionist architectures? What's exciting about FPGAs is that they make "custom" chips affordable for colleges and even individuals... At this point in time, with the AI world fixated on LLMs, it seems that there's an opportunity for small groups/individuals to use FPGAs to experiment with more animal-like ground-up approaches to intel…
Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+
41–50 of 102 posts
Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+
#42Is anyone aware of any examples of FPGAs used to implement neural nets or other connectionist architectures? What's exciting about FPGAs is that they make "custom" chips affordable for colleges and even individuals... At this point in time, with the AI world fixated on LLMs, it seems that there's an opportunity for small groups/individuals to use FPGAs to experiment with more animal-like ground-up approaches to intel…
Have a look into differentiable logic gate networks
Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+
#43just received a kv260 board, i thought vivado is free to use?
Everything is free if you continually renew your trial every 30 days.
Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+
#44For what it's worth: if you have a FT2232H adapter hanging around (and if you don't, you should consider getting one), those adapters can easily be flashed to be compatible with Vivado: https://docs.amd.com/r/en-US/ug908-vivado-programming-debugg...
I _do_ happen to have one laying around from another project, weirdly enough. I've never done FPGA work though, when you say it's compatible with Vivado, what does that mean in practice? I can configure an AMD FPGA, or something more?
Vivado, along with expensive adaptors, supports some JTAG dongles that are just FT2232 with an EEPROM that contains USB descriptors that Vivado recognizes and treats as a (some low cost onboard adaptor for Digilent boards, IIRC) supported adapter.
https://gist.github.com/rikka0w0/24b58b54473227502fa0334bbe7...
If you like FT2232, you’ll love the Tigard board that takes a FT2232H and adds level shifters and is basically as tricked out as you can make a FTDI adapter. https://github.com/tigard-tools/tigard
Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+
#45>The board also came with a travel case But why? Are these boards frequently removed and physically moved around in data centers? Or was that an eBay seller thing to protect it?
> But why?
To bring them to the field, because they’re _field_ programable gate array
/s
Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+
#46If 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…
The top-level Verilog module and Vivado .xdc file (contains pin mappings, timing constraints, etc) from Gidel for the HawkEye 20G-48. [0] No SDK from Gidel though.
My back burner project for them is to create a PCIe TLP sniffer/MiTM/device emulator by hooking up two together via 10 GbE for relaying TLPs with one of the remaining 10 GbE connection going to a host PC for the sniffed/injected TLPs. The Aria 10 FPGA PCIe hard IP allows for either root or endpoint mode so I “just” need to draw the rest of the owl, avoiding any Quartus IP modules that would make the setup non-transparent.
I’m not sure what using a 10 Gbit link for PCIe will be like with faster devices but fail0verflow got away with TLP proxying with 115200 baud UART. [1]
[0]: https://www.ebay.com/itm/335904285904 [1]: https://fail0verflow.com/media/33c3-slides/#/11
Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+
#47Lots still available on eBay https://www.ebay.com/itm/167626831054 I guess there aren't any GPIO's wired up to headers or such? Any suggestions on a project for it that's a good fit?
That’s really nice! Cheap hardware was gone during covid years completely. And now beautiful Kintex for 200$ again. I was super interested in these when I was younger. 2x SFP with PCIe reminds me on NetFPGA project. This card is perfect for it!!
Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+
#48>The board also came with a travel case But why? Are these boards frequently removed and physically moved around in data centers? Or was that an eBay seller thing to protect it?
> But why? To bring them to the field, because they’re _field_ programable gate array /s
That’s why the trowel, I suppose.
Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+
#49Serious competence porn. I love it.
Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+
#50""" dmesg log : [ 0.388790] pci 0000:00:00.0: [14e4:2712] type 01 class 0x060400 [ 0.388817] pci 0000:00:00.0: PME# supported from D0 D3hot [ 0.389752] pci 0000:00:00.0: bridge configuration invalid ([bus 00-00]), reconfiguring [ 0.495733] brcm-pcie 1000110000.pcie: link up, 5.0 GT/s PCIe x1 (!SSC) [ 0.495759] pci 0000:01:00.0: [dabc:1017] type 00 class 0x020000 ... Since most people might not be intimately as famili…
Agreed, it would be so nice.
But I can also understand they might want to keep dmesg as learn as possible.