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News Release from: EPCC, University of Edinburgh
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 20 March 2007
FPGA supercomputer celebrates Scottish
heritage
A new FPGA supercomputer named Maxwell is based on technology invented in Scotland and constructed by the FPGA High Performance Computing Alliance.
A new FPGA supercomputer named Maxwell is based on technology invented in Scotland and constructed by the FPGA High Performance Computing Alliance The system, built at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, uses FPGAs as an alternative to conventional microprocessors
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 8 Nov 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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More powerful than a conventional system of a similar sise and using ten times less power, Maxwell is delivering new levels of computational performance for real-world industrial applications.
Maxwell has been built using world-leading FPGA technology designed and manufactured by Scottish SMEs Nallatech and Alpha Data.
It uses next generation FPGAs provided by Xilinx, the world's leading FPGA company.
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Maxwell's power has already been demonstrated by porting three numerically intensive applications from the oil and gas, financial and medical imaging sectors.
The system provides unprecedented computing power in relation to energy costs and it is anticipated that Maxwell could usher in a new generation of compact and energy-saving computers over the coming decade.
The FHPCA (FPGA High Performance Computing Alliance) has spent the past two years and GBP 3.6 million, including funding from Scottish Enterprise, developing Maxwell.
The alliance builds on Scotland's world-class reputation and expertise in the field of high performance reconfigurable computing.
Maxwell will prove to be a valuable resource for industries with massive processing requirements such as: drug design, military defence, seismology, medical imaging, mobile telecomms, computer modelling and financial engineering.
Mark Parsons, Commercial Director of EPCC, the supercomputing centre that built Maxwell, said: "The FHPCA project has allowed EPCC to do what it does best: engauge with local SMEs to develop new technologies and new solutions and help them to grow their businesses".
"Maxwell represents a major opportunity for Scotland in this exciting technology space".
Colin Urquhart, Chief Executive Officer of Dimensional Imaging, which originated the code used in the medical imaging demonstrator project, said: "Working with the FHPCA has introduced Dimensional Imaging to a new technology which offers the potential to increase dramatically the speed of our advanced image processing algorithms".
"In the future we expect this will enable new products and sales for the company".
Graham Fairlie, Project Manager with Scottish Enterprise's Enabling Technology and Engineering team, added: "The completion of the demonstrator applications is a significant step forward in exploiting the commercial potential of the Maxwell technology both for the benefit of the partner companies involved in the project and in Scotland's key industries such as financial services, energy and life sciences where the high performance technology could be used to deliver significant improvements in productivity".
"Scottish Enterprise has played a key role in the project so far, recognising the synergies between the expertise of EPCC and the wider community with reconfigurable chip expertise".
"We are looking forward to the next phase of the project and continuing to work with the partners to ensure we can realise the economic potential of this technology to help grow the wider Scottish economy".
Allan Cantle, President and Founder of Nallatech, a founding member of FHPCA, said: "FPGA based computing systems have been Nallatech's core business for over a decade".
"We can now deliver unprecedented computational capacity, using less power in a smaller space".
"The FHPCA has unleashed the acceptance of FPGA technology in the HPC community and the completion of this demonstrator is a major achievement for Scotland".
Graham Smart, Managing Director of Alpha Data, a founding member of FHPCA, added: "FPGAs have grown up over recent years".
"Dramatic improvements in density, speed and cost enable these devices to perform compute bound applications hundreds of times faster than conventional processors".
"FPGAs are ubiquitous in the embedded systems community, and with the Von Neumann processor running out of steam, FHPCA is perfectly poised to help the HPC community adopt this technology".
"Alpha Data takes care of the deployment of FPGA platforms and with FHPCA is able to offer comprehensive FPGA-based solutions to the HPC and scientific communities".
During 2007 and 2008 FHPCA will run a series of seminars to introduce Maxwell to UK industrial sectors.
The first event will be in Edinburgh in May this year.
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