Expanded OpenCL support for Altera Stratix V FPGAs

19th November 2013

Bittware

Nat Bowers

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Datasheet

BittWare has expanded its Open Computing Language support to additional Stratix V variants on their S5PH-Q PCI Express board. FPGA options now include GSMD5, GSED8, GXEA7 and GXEAB devices. Offering up to 16 GBytes of on-board DDR3 memory at 800MHz (1600 Mtps), S5PH-Q is a half-length PCIe x8 card. Two front-panel QSFP+ cages on the board allow implementation of two 40GigE (or eight 10GigE) interfaces direct to the FPGA for reduced latency.

A versatile and efficient solution, the board suits applications including high-performance network processing, CPU acceleration and high frequency trading.

Ron Huizen, BittWare Vice President of Systems & Solutions, comments: "Altera's OpenCL initiative addresses the issues faced when adopting FPGA technology in spaces traditionally dominated by programmable processors. OpenCL provides a more traditional software programming environment, opening FPGAs to a much larger potential developer base, cutting development cycles from many months to a few weeks or even days. We're very pleased to be able to offer OpenCL support for Altera's Stratix V FPGAs on our fully tested, deployable board-level products."

Since BittWare is a part of Altera's Preferred Board Partner Program for OpenCL, the S5PH-Q is supported by Altera's Software Development Kit for OpenCL. Altera SDK for OpenCL is available in the Altera Quartus II software version 13.1.

A special OpenCL Developers Bundle is also available from BittWare, which has everything developers need to get up and running, including the Altera OpenCL SDK.

Featuring up to 72 MBytes QDRII/II+, two SATA connectors and timestamping support, the S5PH-Q provides utility I/O including: USB 2.0, RS-232, and JTAG.

The OpenCL developers bundle includes the BittWare S5-PCIe-HQ Altera Stratix V half-length PCIe board with two banks of 4GByte DDR3 SDRAM. With S5PH-Q Board Support Package, it also includes BittWare BittWorks II Toolkit application development software for BittWare COTS boards, a license for the Altera Quartus II software, Developer's Kit Edition, and a license for the Altera SDK for OpenCL. While the Altera USB Byte Blaster downloads configuration or program data into the Stratix V, the BittWare Breakout Board provides front panel access to signals and interfaces on the S5PH-Q (two RS-232 connectors, an RJ-45 Ethernet jack, and a micro-USB shell that are all accessible via the front panel).

All configurations of BittWare's OpenCL Developers Bundle and S5PH-Q are available and shipping today.