FPGA Central

Dear OpenFPGA colleagues,



Several months ago I sent to this list a note on our plans to develop the
new Novo-G machine with an invitation to participate. I am happy to report
that the new machine is now operational for research. More info (including
a link to more technical details) is provided below. Many thanks to Altera,
GiDEL, Ace Computers, Impulse, Mitrionics, and UF students and faculty for
work to make it happen. If at this time you wish to participate, please
feel free to contact me to discuss.



Eric and I have been discussing various ways to foster better cooperation
and collaboration between OpenFPGA and CHREC for the benefit of both and the
field at large. In future, you will see outputs from CHREC research coming
to OpenFPGA for discussion, review, and we hope acceptance and
standardization. Meanwhile, we welcome suggestions from OpenFPGA on
research needs and projects of potential value to both organizations and the
field.



Best wishes,



Alan G.





_____



I am happy to report that construction has been completed on the new Novo-G
machine and it is now ready to support a variety of research experiments in
CHREC for various projects and participants. A brief overview of the new
system is posted on the CHREC web site here:
http://www.chrec.org/facilities.html. Novo-G is believed to be the most
powerful reconfigurable computer in the known world, certainly at least the
academic/research community. The FPGAs featured in Novo-G are among the
most powerful available today.



Although Novo-G may at first sound like it only serves as a research machine
in the HPC realm of RC, in reality is supports equally well the HPEC
(embedded) realm of RC. The boards featured in Novo-G (GiDEL ProcStar-III)
are themselves originally marketed and intended as embedded processing
boards, each with four big FPGAs with many attached memory banks plus
various other supporting devices. SWAP is among of the key issues for them.
We happen to be putting and using more of them in a single machine than
anyone has attempted before. With Novo-G, researchers can focus on issues
with a single FPGA, a set of two, three, or four FPGAs on a single board
with fast streaming pipes between, or many FPGAs (up to 96) spanning
multiple boards, as their needs require. Thus, Novo-G will be supporting RC
research projects that span the HPC and HPEC sides.



Novo-G will support a variety of tools, including vendor tools as well as
various CHREC tools for formulation, design, translation, and execution. At
the device level, Novo-G of course supports applications design with VHDL
and Verilog, but also several ESLs. We have successfully ported the
Impulse-C tool to this platform, the Altera FP Compiler is already in use in
our work, and efforts are in progress to do the same for Mitrion-C, all with
help from the board and associated tool vendors. At the system level,
support is being established over InfiniBand for MPI, UPC, and a limited
version of SHMEM. Several other options are also in consideration. Efforts
are in the works to port our CHREC performance tool (ReCAP) and its
debug/verification sidekick to Novo-G, and our folks on RCML, Intermediate
Fabrics, etc. also have plans for Novo-G.



Professor Herman Lam has been leading all summer long (i.e. since mid-May
when the semester began) a set of six teams of energetic, volunteer students
(two or three students per team) with their efforts to build apps that can
scale and execute effectively on Novo-G. He will be reporting highlights
from these projects next month as the semester winds down.



..

__________________________________________________ _________

Dr. Alan D. George, Professor of ECE and Director

NSF Center for High-performance Reconfigurable Computing (CHREC)

High-performance Computing & Simulation (HCS) Research Laboratory



University of Florida, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering

327 Larsen Hall, POB 116200, Gainesville, FL, 32611-6200

Office: (352)392-5225, Fax: (352)392-8671, Lab: (352)392-9034/9046

Email: <mailto:george (AT) hcs (DOT) ufl.edu> george (AT) hcs (DOT) ufl.edu or george (AT) chrec (DOT) org

Web: <http://www.hcs.ufl.edu/> www.hcs.ufl.edu and www.chrec.org
<http://www.chrec.org/>




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