FPGAs andTheir Applications

Richard KnollProduct Innovations

25th-floor GmbH

Contents

Technical Background

BusinessUse Cases

Questions& Answers

• (Re-)Programmable hardware circuit• Components• CLBs• Interconnect• I/O blocks• Memory blocks• DSP blocks• Clock distribution and PLL• …

What is an FPGA?technical background

Comparisontechnical background

General purpose processorEasy to programLots of tools and frameworksPowerful compilers

CPU

Parallel compute unitsThousands of concurrent threadsHigh latency, but high throughputTool support

GPU

Flexible hardwareLow latency (ns)Reconfigurable in millisecondsIdeal for prototyping

FPGA

High performanceLow powerExpensive in small numbersSingle purposeWorst time-to-market

ASIC

5 Reasons FPGAs Will Succeed1. Performance2. Time-to-market3. Cost-efficiency4. Reliability5. Long-term use

technical background

Contents

✓Technical Background

BusinessUse Cases

Questions& Answers

Consumer Electronics• Time-to-market• NRE costs• Support new algorithms• Circular economy

use case #1

image: JVCAmerica

Realtime Embedded Systems• Strict latency requirements• Compute-intensive

algorithms• Flexible I/O ports

use case #2

Automotive• Single chip solution• Supply chain optimization• Many unknown variables at design time

use case #3

image: Tesla Model S / Al Abut

Space Exploration• Very low volume (1?)• Mission changes• Tight launch windows• Reconfigure after errors

due to radiation

use case #4

top image: ESA/ATG medialab

Risk Management• JP Morgan & Maxeler• Speedup: 120x• Multiple scenarios per day• Outperform competitors

use case #5

One of the largest financial institutions in the world is using FPGA-based supercomputing for analyzing some of its largest and most complex credit derivative portfolios.  – HPCWire

Contents

✓✓Technical Background

BusinessUse Cases

Questions& Answers

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FPGAs andTheir Applications

Richard KnollProduct Innovations

25th-floor GmbH