University of Florida Novo-G Builds on Altera, Impulse C and GiDEL to Create the Next-Generation, Scalable Reconfigurable Computer

Researchers Demonstrate Computing Architecture that Optimizes Hardware for Software

Kirkland, WA – July 14, 2009 – Altera®, Impulse™, and GiDEL™ are supporters of the University of Florida’s Novo-G computer, being built at CHREC, the NSF Center for High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing. Novo-G will be the most powerful reconfigurable computing (RC) machine ever fielded for research, linking 96 top-end Altera Stratix® III FPGAs in 24 servers with 576 GB of memory and 20 Gb/s InfiniBand. Several scalable applications in Impulse-C are currently in development for Novo-G.

“Altera is pleased to have a long-standing relationship with the University of Florida and CHREC,” said Stephen Brown, supervising architect of software and IP engineering at Altera Corporation. “As a leading research center for FPGA[]-based computing, CHREC provides valuable access to key research results, and is helping to advance the state-of-the-art in this important field. Altera remains committed to working in partnership with CHREC and its member institutions and looks forward to the possibilities created by FPGA-based computing.”

The Novo-G project is led by Professors Alan George and Herman Lam at Florida. The goal of the Novo-G project and system is to advance and prove RC technologies at a level of scale, performance, and productivity unprecedented in this field, for applications from satellites to supercomputers. Novo-G is based on PCI Express FPGA cards provided by GiDEL and populated with high performance Stratix III FPGAs from Altera. Support for C programming of these cards has been enabled with an Impulse C Platform Support Package (PSP) developed by Rafael Garcia at the CHREC lab. Several scalable applications are being developed for Novo-G by CHREC researchers. A tomographic algorithm has also been provided by a University of Washington team.

The criteria that led to the selection of the major components centered on reliable, easy to use, scalable elements. Particular emphasis was placed on ensuring the widest possible design entry point for the array. Accordingly the University specified C-based entry. Within this criterion, Impulse C proved particularly accessible for non-hardware engineers. In one test, a student team used Impulse’s automatic C to ModelSim® test bench generator to expose three processes which got “stuck” checking for an eos on the sequence stream. This was re-confirmed using Impulse’s graphical stage delay analysis. (see image)

“We are very impressed with how quickly the CHREC team realized useful results,” said Brian Durwood, co-founder of Impulse. “We saw a talented team of new graduate students incorporate powerful new hardware, and begin getting co-design results in only a few weeks. This project should really help establish benchmarks for the productivity of hardware/software codesign in which both algorithms and physical elements are adapted to maximize throughput.”

Impulse C has a growing community of universities and corporate researchers creating redeployable intellectual property (IP) for FPGAs. Much of this IP is available royalty free as part of Impulse C or from the Impulse C user community. Impulse is supporting collaborations with FPGA research groups worldwide. Interested parties should contact info@ImpulseAccelerated.com.

About Impulse – Impulse provides software-to-FPGA solutions for embedded and high performance computing. Impulse is used by 8 of the top 10 government contractors, half the worldwide automotive manufacturers and by a wide range of medical, industrial and consumer processing designers. www.ImpulseAccelerated.com

About Altera – Altera programmable solutions enable system and semiconductor companies to rapidly and cost-effectively innovate, differentiate and win in their markets. Find out more about Altera’s FPGA, CPLD and ASIC devices at www.altera.com.

About GiDEL – GiDEL is one of the market leaders in cutting-edge reconfigurable technology utilizing FPGAs. Customers in military/aerospace, semiconductor, consumer product, machine vision, medical imaging and communications use GiDEL boards for SoC and ASIC verification, as COTS acquisition and accelerator boards, and to validate complex algorithms. www.gidel.com

About CHREC – the NSF Center for High-Performance Reconfigurable Computing (pronounced “shreck”) is comprised of more than 30 leading organizations in this field from the academic, industry, and government sectors with synergistic interests and goals in reconfigurable, adaptive computing. www.chrec.org