Innovative technologies I---Applying scalable acalis field programmable multi-cores to HPC
Gail Walters · 2006
Field Programmable Multi-Cores (FPMCs) are a new class of semiconductors that offers the flexibility of FPGAs and the high density, low power and high performance of SoCs. Developed by CPU Tech in collaboration with IBM, Acalis(tm) FPMCs offer a sea of cores combined with a Programmable Interconnect Fabric(tm) (PIF) that can be configured in the field. One of the first Acalis members is targeted specifically at high performance computing. A multi-core computing node on a chip, it offers significant improvements in power/performance, price/performance and size/performance. Their extremely low latency facilitates the partitioning and acceleration of applications. These parts can work either as an extension to an existing system or as a stand-alone computer. This paper will discuss the architecture, key metrics of the device, and the software development tools. It will also present examples of how scalable versions of Acalis can be applied to High Performance Computing problems.