Silicon Graphics Teams With Celoxica to Accelerate High-Performance Computing Applications; FPGA-based Acceleration Solution Combines Celoxica C-based Design Tools With SGI's Reconfigurable Computing Technology
OXFORDSHIRE, England—(BUSINESS WIRE)—June 20, 2005—
Celoxica, Ltd. today announced support for Silicon
Graphics, Inc.'s (SGI) Reconfigurable Application-Specific Computing
(RASC) technology in the Celoxica DK Design Suite of tools for C-based
design and synthesis. Celoxica and SGI have teamed to deliver
libraries and tools defining a software programming environment for
algorithm acceleration using field-programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs.
SGI intends to include evaluation copies of Celoxica's design software
as part of its RASC development kit shipping this month.
"For FPGA-based acceleration in high-performance computing
applications, having a software-based programming environment is
extremely important," said Steve Miller, chief engineer, system
architecture, at SGI. "The Celoxica tools give RASC customers an
easy-to-use programming environment for accelerating their C software
algorithms using the parallel processing capabilities of FPGA without
going through hardware description languages."
RASC is the term coined by SGI in reference to high-performance
computing systems which use FPGA technology in a co-processor model.
Reconfigurable chips can be programmed by a customer to optimize their
specific tasks in co-processing systems that can offer significant --
potentially orders of magnitude -- performance improvements at lower
power and heat than conventional microprocessors alone. Applications
that can benefit from this approach include image recognition,
decryption, gene comparison, video format translation, and data
compression to name a few.
Previous FPGA-based acceleration systems have been limited by the
traditional chip design process centered on hardware description
languages (HDL). HDL use is both foreign and difficult for most
end-user programmers and is too slow for software-oriented algorithm
development.
To solve this problem, Celoxica provides a mature and proven
C-based design and synthesis environment to accelerate software
algorithms on RASC systems. The DK Design Suite of tools delivers a
programming path directly to RASC systems from algorithm to system
implementation, including software-based design entry, cycle-accurate
simulation, C-based synthesis and seamless integration with FPGA
vendor place and route tools. Algorithm development using Celoxica
tools is typically 60% faster and produces FPGA results that rival HDL
flows.
"We are very pleased that SGI chose to include Celoxica tools as
one of the C-programming environments in its RASC development kit,"
said Phil Bishop president and CEO of Celoxica. "This shows the
potential of reconfigurable computing and value of C-based design and
synthesis in opening access to these systems for users and for new
applications. It is truly exciting to be able to offer so much
potential for so many markets."
About Celoxica
An innovator in Electronic System Level (ESL) design, Celoxica is
turning software into silicon by supplying the design tools, boards,
IP and services that enable the next generation of advanced electronic
product design. Celoxica technology raises design abstraction to the
algorithm level, accelerating productivity and lowering risk and costs
by generating semiconductor hardware directly from C-based software
descriptions. Adding to a growing installed base, Celoxica provides
the world's most widely used C-based behavioral design and synthesis
solutions to companies developing semiconductor products in markets
such as consumer electronics, defense and aerospace, automotive,
industrial and security. For more information, visit:
www.celoxica.com.
Celoxica and the Celoxica logo are trademarks of Celoxica, Ltd.
All other brand names and product names are the property of their
respective owners.
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