Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

aws.amazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 212 posts

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#151

Post by krupan »

Cyph0n wrote: post #74
krupan wrote: post #65

For complex designs the simulator that comes with the Vivado tools (Mentor's modelsim) is not going to cut it. I wonder if they are working on deals with Mentor (or competitors Cadence and Synopsys) to license their full-featured simulators. Even better, maybe Amazon (and others getting into this space like Intel and Microsoft) will put their weight behind an open source VHDL/Verilog simulator. A few exist but they a…

> For complex designs the simulator that comes with the Vivado tools (Mentor's modelsim) is not going to cut it. It's now called QuestaSim I believe. But are you sure it can't handle simulating large designs? If yes, what is the full-featured software from Mentor that can? > Heck, maybe they can drive adoption of one of the up-and-coming HDL's like chisel Chisel isn't a full-blown HDL from what I understand; it's onl…

Questa is the full blown tool. Modelsim is a step down and that's what comes with FPGA tools. Usually the version of modelsim that Xilinx and Altera ship is crippled performance wise.

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#152

Post by corysama »

duskwuff wrote: post #127
CalChris wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is cool if you're already using FPGAs and yeah, there will be a market for FPGA designers. But I also think this is FPGAs for the Rest of Us . Suddenly, FPGAs are available without having to buy some development board from Xilinx, install a toolchain, use said (shitty) toolchain ... Me, I was thinking of FPGAs as being something I'd use down the road a few years, eventually, etc. But instead, I'm looking at…

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.

Any recommendations on an entry-level development board?

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#153

Post by fpgaminer »

neurotech1 wrote: post #149
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.

Based on my speculation, and to make a long analysis short: fewer, bigger FPGAs are better in the cloud from a user experience perspective than more, smaller FPGAs. The big applications are all going to consume as much FPGA fabric as they can (machine learning, data analysis, etc). Even "mid-range" Deep Learning will consume these FPGAs like candy. Non-deep learning will too; they can always just go more parallel and get the job done faster.

Amazon is betting on the fact that they can get better pricing than anyone else. They probably can. No one else will be buying these FPGAs in quantities Amazon will if these instances become popular (within their niche). So for the medium sized players it'll be cheaper to rent the FPGAs from Amazon, even with the AWS markup, than to buy the boards themselves. Especially for dynamic workloads where you're saving money by renting instead of owning (which is generally the advantage of cloud resources).

That's my guess anyway.

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#154

Post by fpgaminer »

mozumder wrote: post #109

Anyone have a hardware ZLIB implementation that I can drop into my Python toolchains as a direct replacement for ZLIB to compress web-server responses with no latency? Could also use a fast JPG encoder/decoder as well.

Why stop there? Hack your kernel to deliver network packets directly to the FPGA and then implement the whole server stack in the FPGA. Why settle for response times on the order of milliseconds when you can get nanoseconds?

But seriously, I'm open to ideas for technologies that you or anyone else needs implemented for these instances. Would make an interesting side business for me.

EDIT: I should point out that I'm an experienced "full-stack" engineer when it comes to FPGAs. I've implemented the FPGA code and the software to drive them. None of this software developed by "hardware guys" garbage.

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#155

Post by ktta »

serge2k wrote: post #130
ktta wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest Digital Design by Morris Mano[1]. It'll start off with basic intro from digital gates to FPGAs itself! And you really don't need any EE background for this book. This book starts from absolute basics and it'll also teach you Verilog along the way. And verilog is used more in the industry than VHDL(which more popular in Europe and in the US army for some reason). I'm surprised where you got the idea of…

220 new. I am so glad I don't have to buy textbooks anymore.

Maybe I should've included this but older versions are not much different from the new one and the more older ones go for dirt cheap compared to the new one.

Here's a 4th edition used book for $13.95

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Digital-Design-4th-Edition-Ciletti-M...

But yeah, the publishing industry is in a pretty bad shape (for students/consumers)

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#156

Post by huntero »

Given that the Amazon cloud is such a huge consumer of Intel's X86 processors, even using Amazon-tailored Xeon's, it's surprising that Amazon chose Xilinx over the Intel-owned Altera.

These Xilinx 16nm Virtex FPGA's are beasts, but Altera has some compelling choices as well. Perhaps some of the hardened IP in the Xilinx tipped the scales, such as the H.265 encode/decode, 100G EMAC, PCI-E Gen 4?

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#157

Post by mozumder »

fpgaminer wrote: post #154
mozumder wrote: post #109

Anyone have a hardware ZLIB implementation that I can drop into my Python toolchains as a direct replacement for ZLIB to compress web-server responses with no latency? Could also use a fast JPG encoder/decoder as well.

Why stop there? Hack your kernel to deliver network packets directly to the FPGA and then implement the whole server stack in the FPGA. Why settle for response times on the order of milliseconds when you can get nanoseconds? But seriously, I'm open to ideas for technologies that you or anyone else needs implemented for these instances. Would make an interesting side business for me. EDIT: I should point out that I'm…

Speaking as a hardware guy, I think that's the ultimate goal as well :)

Been planning a NIC card that directly serves web apps via HDL for a while now...

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#158

Post by rphlx »

huntero wrote: post #156

Given that the Amazon cloud is such a huge consumer of Intel's X86 processors, even using Amazon-tailored Xeon's, it's surprising that Amazon chose Xilinx over the Intel-owned Altera. These Xilinx 16nm Virtex FPGA's are beasts, but Altera has some compelling choices as well. Perhaps some of the hardened IP in the Xilinx tipped the scales, such as the H.265 encode/decode, 100G EMAC, PCI-E Gen 4?

Stratix10 (the large, Intel 14nm family) was delayed, delayed, delayed, and delayed some more. Last I heard it was supposed to be in high-prio customer hands by end of 2016, but unclear if that meant "more eng samples" or the actual, final production parts. Either way Xilinx beat them to market by approx 3-6 months AFAICT.

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#159

Post by davrosthedalek »

corysama wrote: post #152
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.

Any recommendations on an entry-level development board?

If you are in the academic sector, pretty much everybody has an university program where one can get hardware/software for reduced prices or as a donation.

Personally, I started dabbling with a zynq zedboard. FPGA+Hard arm cores, many stuff on board + extension capabilities.

Re: Developer Preview – EC2 Instances with Programmable Hardware

#160

Post by rphlx »

problems wrote: post #99
majke wrote: post #13

Bitcoin mining. WPA2 brute forcing. Maybe someone will finally find the triple-des password used at adobe for password hashing. The possibilities are endless :)

Mining is unlikely, with bitcoin at least. Bitcoin passed the FPGA stage and moved onto ASICs many years ago. There are some alt coins that are currently best mined on GPUs though and this may change that or put their claims to a real test.

The boards used for this preview do not have enough memory bandwidth to pose even a modest threat to the latest batch of memory-hard GPU PoW algos.
Post reply on HN