AEROSPACE

Cray Inc. today announced that it is partnering with Impulse Accelerated Technologies, Inc. to help programmers speed up applications running on the Cray XD1 supercomputer. Impulse has added a platform support package to its CoDeveloper C-language development system that makes it easier for software developers to program the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) devices that significantly boost processing performance on the Cray XD1 system. The FPGAs in the Cray XD1 supercomputer accelerate applications by acting as high-speed, specialized co-processors. FPGAs shift computational work from the main processors, running special subroutines that take over portions of the application. By leveraging these reconfigurable computing techniques, users are able to solve complex problems in less time without having to increase the size and power budget of the supercomputer. Applications that can benefit include seismic engineering, bioinformatics, financial modeling and other compute-intensive activities. Used in conjunction with other design tools, the Impulse CoDeveloper software-to-hardware compiler automates the creation of FPGA-based accelerators by providing C-language-to-FPGA-logic compilation and optimization, and by generating the necessary interface logic. Developers can quickly and easily embed the accelerator software in the Cray XD1 system. Additional tools allow users to analyze results to maximize performance and ensure bit- and cycle-accurate operation. "The combination of Impulse CoDeveloper tools and Cray XD1 supercomputer architecture opens up a rapid path to higher performing applications," said Impulse Chief Technology Officer David Pellerin. "Using CoDeveloper and Impulse C, programmers can improve performance by as much as two orders of magnitude compared to equivalent functions running on traditional processors. And they can accomplish this without redesigning the hardware or having to call in hardware design experts to program the FPGAs. In addition, the software team can experiment with new approaches free from premature restrictions on the hardware interface." "We are very pleased that Impulse Accelerated Technologies is joining with us to make the Cray XD1 supercomputer even more valuable to high-performance computing users," said Amar Shan, product manager for the Cray XD1 system. "Developers who want to increase the performance of their applications with FPGAs can use Impulse's CoDeveloper to program in the familiar C language, instead of low-level languages such as VHDL that are more suited for hardware development. Cray and our partners will continue to make tools available that help improve development productivity and simplify the design process." "In high-performance computing applications, critical functions often represent bottlenecks that can be alleviated by hardware acceleration," according to Dr. Alan George, founder and director of the High-Performance Computing and Simulation Laboratory at the University of Florida. "In bringing the performance advantages of cutting-edge reconfigurable computing systems to these applications, an extremely important path to execute these functions is through software-to-hardware mapping. Impulse's tools provide these capabilities by helping to bridge the gap between software and hardware design, and also offer great potential for design exploration and optimization." For information about the availability of Impulse CoDeveloper tools for the Cray XD1 supercomputer, contact Cray at crayinfo@cray.com or Impulse at info@impulsec.com.