A Scalable FPGA-based Multiprocessor

It has been shown that a small number of FPGAs can significantly accelerate certain computing tasks by up to two or three orders of magnitude. However, particularly intensive large-scale computing applications, such as molecular dynamics simulations of biological systems, underscore the need for even greater speedups to address relevant length and time scales. In this work, we propose an architecture for a scalable computing machine built entirely using FPGA computing nodes. The machine enables designers to implement largescale computing applications using a heterogeneous combination of hardware accelerators and embedded microprocessors spread across many FPGAs, all interconnected by a flexible communication network. Parallelism at multiple levels of granularity within an application can be exploited to obtain the maximum computational throughput. By focusing on applications that exhibit a high computation-tocommunication ratio, we narrow the extent of this investigation to the deve...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: FCCM
• Authors: Arun Patel, Christopher A. Madill, Manuel Saldaña, Chris Comis, Regis Pomes, Paul Chow
• Keywords: Computing Applications, Computing Tasks, FCCM 2006, Hardware, Molecular Dynamics Simulation