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Mine Cryptocurrencies Sooner, Faster, and Cheaper with Achronix Speedcore Embedded FPGAs (WP014)
New cryptocurrencies such as Monero introduce ASIC-resistance and memory-hardness to prevent ASICs from being built that give some operators a competitive mining advantage over others who do not have access to the same technology. This white paper discusses the relevant background and presents a solution based on Achronix Speedcore™ embedded FPGAs (eFPGAs), enabling users to regain a highly profitable advantage over competing solutions.
How to Meet Power Performance and Cost for Autonomous Vehicle Systems using Speedcore eFPGAs (WP015)
In the advanced, fully autonomous, self-driving vehicles of the future, the existence of dozens and even hundreds of distributed CPUs and numerous other processing elements is assured. Peripheral sensor-fusion and other processing tasks can be served by ASICs, SoCs, or traditional FPGAs. But the introduction of embedded FPGA blocks such as Achronix's Speedcore eFPGA IP provides numerous system-design advantages in terms of shorter latency, more security, greater bandwidth, and better reliability that are simply not possible when using CPUs, GPUs, or even standalone FPGAs.
The past decade has seen massive growth in centralized computing, with data processing flowing to the cloud to take advantage of low-cost dedicated data centers. It was a trend that seemed at odds with the general trend in computing — a trend that started with the mainframe but moved progressively towards ambient intelligence and the internet of things (IoT). As we move into 2018, this centralization is reaching its limit. The volume of data that will be needed to drive the next wave of applications is beginning to force a change in direction.
The Ideal Solution for AI Applications — Speedcore eFPGAs (WP011)
AI requires a careful balance of datapath performance, memory latency, and throughput that requires an approach based on pulling as much of the functionality as possible into an ASIC or SoC. But that single-chip device needs plasticity to be able to handle the changes in structure that are inevitable in machine-learning projects. Adding eFPGA technology provides the mixture of flexibility and support for custom logic that the market requires. Achronix provides not only the building blocks required for an AI-ready eFPGA solution, but also delivers a framework that supports design through to debug and test of the final application. Only Achronix Speedcore IP has the right mix of features for advanced AI that will support a new generation of real-time, self-learning systems.
Enhancing eFPGA Functionality with Speedcore Custom Blocks (WP009)
Achronix Speedcore™ eFPGA IP can be integrated in an SoC for high-performance, compute-intensive and realtime processing applications such as AI, automotive sensor fusion, network acceleration and wireless 5G. Speedcore eFPGA IP is a game-changer for SoC developers, allowing them to add flexibility to their products by including FPGA technology in their ASICs. For SoC development, companies specify the quantity and mix of lookup-table (LUT) logic, embedded memory blocks, and DSP blocks that best meets their needs. Along with these functions, Achronix now offers the ability for companies to define custom block functions, optimized for their application, that can also be included in the eFPGA fabric. Speedcore custom blocks increase die area efficiency, increase performance and lower power.
Phase zero is the beginning of a Speedcore design and how you begin matters. From a technical perspective, you will want to explore the possibilities to maximize the benefit of having your ASIC deployed with a Speedcore instance with a mix of resources well suited to your current and future programmed configurations. Achronix will help you along this road, providing support, training and feedback in employing tools, benchmarking designs and dealing with optimization issues.
EFPGA Acceleration in SoCs — Understanding the Speedcore IP Design Process (WP008)
The Speedcore design and integration methodology has been defined with intimate awareness of the difficulties ASIC engineering teams must contend with. All the necessary files and flows for capturing the functional, timing and power characteristics of a user-defined and programmed Speedcore instance, along with support for successfully reconfiguring an already field-deployed Speedcore IP embedded in an ASIC, are available to an ASIC development team either as products of the ACE design tools or as deliverables provided by Achronix. This methodology has already been proven in silicon and readily accommodates variations and preferences in company-specific ASIC development methodologies.
Embedded FPGA – a New System-Level Programming Paradigm (WP006)
The current public debate on the future of the semiconductor industry has turned to discussions about a growing selection of technologies that focuses instead on new system architectures and better use of available silicon through new concepts in circuit, device, and packaging design. The emergence of embedded FPGA is, in fact, not only essential at this juncture of the microelectronics history, but also inevitable. To understand this, a review of the history of FPGA technology is in order.
The manufacturing process for any silicon device inevitably has variations, whether those are in the thickness of a substrate or track, the purity of a conductor, position of the die on the wafer, or one of a myriad of many other physical effects.
This document describes the Speedster7t FPGA GPIO pins, their various features, how to configure them, any design considerations to be taken into account, and the tools required to implement them.
Snapshot is the real-time design debugging tool for Achronix FPGAs and cores. This guide details the setup and operation of the Snapshot feature using a simple reference design.
The Speedster7t FPGA family of devices has a network hierarchy that enables extremely high-speed dataflow between the FPGA core and the interfaces around the periphery, as well as between logic within the FPGA itself. This on-chip network hierarchy supports a cross-sectional bidirectional bandwidth of 20 Tbps. It supports a multitude of interface protocols including GDDR6, DDR4/5, 400G Ethernet, and PCI Express Gen5 data streams, while greatly simplifying access to memory and high-speed protocols. Achronix's two-dimensional network on chip (2D NoC) provides for read/write transactions throughout the device, as well as specialized support for 400G Ethernet streams in selected columns. The features of the 2D NoC described in this user guide generally pertain to the entire Speedster7t family of devices. In order to help users understand specific connections and features of the 2D NoC, this user guide focuses on the 2D NoC as implemented in the AC7t1500 device.
Speedster7t devices include high-speed Ethernet interfaces, which can support a wide variety of Ethernet packet protocols and speeds of up to 400 Gbps per channel. These Ethernet interfaces are paired with latest generation SerDes which individually support 100 Gbps data rates. With eight of these SerDes per Ethernet interface, each interface can support 2× 400 Gbps Ethernet IP channels.
