News Release
Dec 18, 2007
GRAPE-7 Model800 Released
We have released the high-end model of GRAPE-7, Model800. It houses
four Altera CycloneIII EP3C120 FPGA devices. Compared to the previous
models which house CycloneII EP2C70 devices, the new model can
integrate larger number of pipelines which operate at lower power
consumption (specifications of all models : model800 and old models). As the interface
to the host computer, it adopts 16-lane PCI Express which has
theoretical bandwidth 4 or 5 times higher than that of previous models
(PCI-X 100MHz/133MHz, or 4-lane PCI Express). International price:
698,000 JPY.
Key Features
- Houses four Altera CycloneIII EP3C120 FPGA (reconfigurable)
devices. Pipelines for calculation of interactions, such as gravity,
can be implemented into the devices, so that the card works as an
arithmetic-computation accelerator.
- Adopts 16-lane PCI Express as an interface to the host computer.
- A pipeline for gravitational-force calculation (equivalent to
GRAPE-5) is bundled. Its user library has an API compatible with that
of conventional GRAPEs including GRAPE-5 and previous models of
GRAPE-7 (Model100/300/600). Users of these hardwares can seamlessly
migrate their own application codes.
- Users can design their own pipelines with a pipeline-designing
utility PGPG2.
Usage Examples
- As a hardware-accelerator for gravitational many-body simulations:
- A GRAPE-5 equivalent pipeline for gravitational-force calculation
is bundled. Its user library has an API compatible with that of
conventional GRAPEs including GRAPE-5 and previous models of GRAPE-7
(Model100/300/600). Users of these hardwares can seamlessly migrate
their own application codes.
- As a general-purpose, programmable hardware-accelerator for
arithmetic computation:
- Users can design their own pipelines with a pipeline-designing
utility PGPG2.
- As an evaluation board for Altera CycloneIII EP3C120 and 16-lane PCI Express:
- A pipeline-designing utility PGPG2
generates VHDL sources for all logics including those of pipelines and
an interface to the host (except for the PCI-X core). All softwares
including the device driver and the user library are provided with source codes.
Using these sources, users can evaluate CycloneIII EP3C120 and 16-lane PCI Express.
See GRAPE-7 Model800 for more information.