Intel eases use of FPGA acceleration: combines platforms, software stack and ecosystem solutions to maximize performance and lower data center costs

October 2, 2017

Today, Intel announced a comprehensive hardware and software platform solution to enable faster deployment of customized field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based acceleration of networking, storage and computing workloads.

Complex data-intensive applications in the areas of genomics, finance, industry 4.0 and other disciplines are pushing the boundaries of data center capabilities. Intel® FPGA-based acceleration exploits massively parallelized hardware offloading to maximize performance and power efficiency of data centers.

The new solution abstracts the complexities of implementation to enable architects and developers to quickly develop and deploy power-efficient acceleration of a variety of applications and workloads.

This consists of three major elements:

• Intel-qualified FPGA acceleration platforms that operate seamlessly with Intel® Xeon® CPUs
• The Acceleration Stack for Intel Xeon CPU with FPGAs that provide industry standard frameworks, interfaces and optimized libraries
• Growing ecosystem of market-specific solutions

The Intel Programmable Acceleration Card with Intel Arria 10 GX FPGA plugs into a server to accelerate workloads. (Credit: Intel Corporation)

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As the first in a family of Intel® Programmable Acceleration Cards, today Intel is unveiling the Intel Programmable Acceleration Card with the Intel® Arria® 10 GX FPGA enabled by the acceleration stack.

This new platform approach enables Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), such as Dell EMC, to offer Intel Xeon processor-based server acceleration solutions with their unique value add.

“Dell EMC continues to be committed to delivering technology that helps our customers transform their business and IT,” said Brian Payne, vice president, Product Management and Marketing, Server Solutions Division, Dell EMC. “With this collaboration, Dell EMC and Intel are combining a reliable platform with an emerging software ecosystem that provides a new technology capability for customers to unlock their business potential.”

“Intel is making it easier for server equipment makers such as Dell EMC to exploit FPGA technology for data acceleration as a ready-to-use platform,” said Dan McNamara, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel’s Programmable Solutions Group. “With our ecosystem partners, we are enabling the industry with point solutions with a substantial boost in performance while preserving power and cost budgets.”

The Intel Programmable Acceleration Card with Intel Arria 10 GX FPGA is sampling now and is expected to be broadly available in the first half of 2018.