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Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

aws.amazon.com

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Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#141

Post by duaneb »

baybal2 wrote: post #23
wyldfire wrote: post #4

> Today we are launching a developer preview of the new F1 instance. In addition to building applications and services for your own use, you will be able to package them up for sale and reuse in AWS Marketplace. Wow. An app store for FPGA IPs and the infrastructure to enable anyone to use it. That's really cool.

>Wow. An app store for FPGA IPs I see people making video transcoder instances on day 1, and MPEGLA bankrupting Amazoners with lawsuits on day 2

> I see people making video transcoder instances on day 1, and MPEGLA bankrupting Amazoners with lawsuits on day 2

Only if they distribute it through amazon. Just put the code up in a torrent; anyone can run it without MPEGLA knowing.

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#142

Post by duaneb »

baybal2 wrote: post #21
brendangregg wrote: post #15

Very interesting. I'd still like to see the JVM pick up the FPGA as a possible compile target, that way people could run apps that seamlessly used the FPGA where appropriate. I have mentioned this to Intel, who are promoting this technology (and also have a team that contributes to the JVM), but so far no one is stating publicly that they are working on such a thing.

java hello world will not fit even into a 10 gigagate chip

Tree shaking is not difficult; the JVM just hasn't had much need for trimming its runtime OR static compilation.

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#143

Post by duaneb »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #122
technological wrote: post #19

Quick Question: If anyone wants to learn programming an FPGA is learning C only way to go ? how hard is to learn and program in verilog/VHDL without electrical background ? If anyone suggests links or books, please do Thank You

Honestly, when it comes to learning logic design, if you're not already a programmer you're probably better off. A C programmer will just spend a lot of time learning why the things they already know how to do are not useful.

I actually recommend Haskell. The division between computation and I/O is strikingly similar (and equally difficult to avoid), and they're both declarative systems.

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#144

Post by jsh3d »

This is amazing! We have been developing a tool called Rigel at Stanford (http://rigel-fpga.org) to make it much easier to develop image processing pipelines for FPGA. We have seem some really significant speedups vs CPUs/GPUs [1].

[1] http://www.graphics.stanford.edu/papers/rigel/

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#145

Post by op00to »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #121
op00to wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most research finance departments are absolutely horrified at OpEx because any strange non-capital expenditure makes them look less efficient than the next research institute. This comes in handy when two labs are up for a grant, and they are equally qualified. The more efficient institute gets the grant. You can imagine asking for the lab credit card for EC2 time is not met with enthusiasm.

That's interesting. So, buying a lot of expensive, soon-to-be-obsolete hardware makes your lab more attractive?

Exactly. I haven't worked at my old lab for more than 5 years, but they are still advertising on their web page the systems I built when employed there. Woo! 2010-era blade servers!

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#146

Post by duskwuff »

jeffbarr wrote: post #132
duskwuff wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not count on these instances being useful for development. The parts Amazon is using cost somewhere between $30K and $50K each. Hourly costs will be substantial -- it will likely be cheaper to buy an entry-level development board than to spin up an F1 instance every time you want to run your design.

(post author here) You can do all of the design and simulation on any EC2 instance with enough memory and cores. You don't have to run the dev toolchain on the target instance type.

You can do some simulation on a computer, but it's much slower than real time, even for a small design. Prototyping PCIe communications is also difficult without real hardware.

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#148

Post by __d »

ranman wrote: post #140
ranman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, sorry -- working on fixing that now. Check back in a bit.

Still not fixed. I'all reply here when it is. Might be a few days because of reinvent stuff.

Thanks for the update. Been chasing that link all morning :-)

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#149

Post by neurotech1 »

fpgaminer wrote: post #136

These FPGAs are absolutely _massive_ (in terms of available resources). AWS isn't messing around. To put things into practical perspective my company sells an FPGA based solution that applies our video enhancement technology in real-time to any video streams up to 1080p60 (our consumer product handles HDMI in and out). It's a world class algorithm with complex calculations, generating 3D information and saliency maps…

Any thoughts on why AWS/Xilinx didn't go for a mid-range FPGA to help validate customer requirements?

My guess is that Amazon will have to be very careful not to price themselves out of the market, for mid-range Deep Learning based cloud apps.

Wild guestimate but I think it'll cost more than $20/hr for each instance.

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#150

Post by __d »

brendangregg wrote: post #15

Very interesting. I'd still like to see the JVM pick up the FPGA as a possible compile target, that way people could run apps that seamlessly used the FPGA where appropriate. I have mentioned this to Intel, who are promoting this technology (and also have a team that contributes to the JVM), but so far no one is stating publicly that they are working on such a thing.

Maxeler sells a compiler (and hardware) for writing FPGA apps in Java: https://www.maxeler.com
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