Hardware and Software Components towards the Integration of Network-Attached Accelerators into Data Centers

Abstract

The usage of Field Programmable Gate Arrays(FPGAs) as application-specific accelerators in data centers has grown rapidly in recent years. The main reasons for this are the higher throughput of application-specific accelerators, an improved latency behavior as well as higher energy efficiency compared to conventional computing systems with CPUs and GPUs. In particular, network-attached FPGA accelerators exhibit excellent latency behavior and very high energy efficiency. The high efficiency not only decreases operating costs, but also results in a lower carbon footprint. A disadvantage compared to conventional CPUs and GPUs is the difficult programmability as well as the integration into data centers, which hinders a widespread adoption. To simplify the integration of FPGA accelerators in heterogeneous data centers, we have designed a flexible hardware and software framework to overcome these problems. We also show which components are necessary to fulfill the requirements within a data center.