0
When it comes to speeding up computationally intensive workloads, GPUs are not the only game in town. FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays) are also gaining traction in data centers.
The introduction of standard hardware and software is no guarantee of success in data center acceleration (Intel just canceled its PCIe-based Knights Landing co-processor). But it should make FPGAs accessible to a much wider audience. By next year, FPGA acceleration will be available in standalone chips from Intel and Xilinx, Xeon Scalable processors, PCIe cards, complete Dell EMC servers, or as a service from AWS or Microsoft Azure.
The real battle seems be the software where frameworks and algorithms are rapidly evolving, and there are few standards for heterogeneous compute (or perhaps too many). Nvidia says it has spent billions over the past decade developing its CUDA platform, and Intel will need to match this intensity for FPGAs to make the leap from a handful of the very largest cloud players to the wider data center market.
Related stories:
World’s biggest hard drive gets even bigger Cloud computing migration: More expensive and complicated than you thought Hybrid cloud 2017: Deployment, drivers, strategies, and value (Tech Pro Research) 6 traits all successful digital enterprises have in common
0