Maxwell, A 64 FPGA Supercomputer (pdf)

#1

Post by 0x12 » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 12:30 PM UTC

Maxwell, A 64 FPGA Supercomputer (pdf)
citeseerx.ist.psu.edu

Re: Maxwell, A 64 FPGA Supercomputer (pdf)

#2

Post by 4ad » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 12:46 PM UTC

Warning, PDF link.

Re: Maxwell, A 64 FPGA Supercomputer (pdf)

#3

Post by jedbrown » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 12:50 PM UTC

Wall clock time alone isn't such a useful metric to compare CPU vs. FPGA. It would be more meaningful to normalize by machine cost (initial investment and operating costs). (Software development/non-portability is a separate discussion.)

Re: Maxwell, A 64 FPGA Supercomputer (pdf)

#4

Post by hendler » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 12:54 PM UTC

Online previewing:

http://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fciteseerx.ist...

Re: Maxwell, A 64 FPGA Supercomputer (pdf)

#5

Post by 0x12 » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 1:00 PM UTC

4ad wrote: post #2

Warning, PDF link.

Title updated, thanks!

Re: Maxwell, A 64 FPGA Supercomputer (pdf)

#6

Post by david927 » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 1:56 PM UTC

0x12 wrote: post #5

4ad wrote: post #2

Warning, PDF link.

Title updated, thanks!

Great paper -- thank you! When is the publish date? 2008/2009?

Re: Maxwell, A 64 FPGA Supercomputer (pdf)

#7

Post by david927 » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 2:01 PM UTC

jedbrown wrote: post #3

Wall clock time alone isn't such a useful metric to compare CPU vs. FPGA. It would be more meaningful to normalize by machine cost (initial investment and operating costs). (Software development/non-portability is a separate discussion.)

Sure, but I think this article tips the hand that something fantastic is possible in this vein. I think a restructuring of foundation-level software, and the kind of movement mentioned here, together would make an amazing combination.

Re: Maxwell, A 64 FPGA Supercomputer (pdf)

#8

Post by mmorey » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 2:09 PM UTC

If you are into high performance reconfigurable computing you might be interested in some of the work being done by the CHREC group. Here is a list of there recent papers: http://www.chrec.org/chrecpapers.html

Re: Maxwell, A 64 FPGA Supercomputer (pdf)

#9

Post by alain94040 » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 3:33 PM UTC

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but next to my desk is a machine about 10 times more powerful than what this paper describes.

The main issues with the setup in the paper: latency between nodes. Gigabit Ethernet is just not good for latency. To nitpick some more, Virtex-4 is getting old.

Re: Maxwell, A 64 FPGA Supercomputer (pdf)

#10

Post by sophacles » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 3:39 PM UTC

This is pretty cool! It's nice to see some good work being done on this general reconfigurable stuff.

For an interesting but only tangentially related product, I've been playing with one of these http://rtds.com/index/index.html this week. It's an FPGA driven simulator specialized for power grid stuff. It is fast and quite fun. It allows general programming within the domain, but not true general purpose stuff. I'm sure similar technologies exist for other fields and I was thinking "Someone has to be generalizing this right?". It's nice to see that thought being done here.

Fun fact for startup people: the company is tiny headcount wise but has quite a large market penetration -- it's a good testament to what a passionate, dedicated and highly skilled team can do when they get to it.