The majority of today’s “heterogeneous” computing platforms comprise of only two types of processor technology: x86 and GPU. Other technologies such as Intel’s Xeon Phi and ARM have started to gain adoption, however the datacentre is not yet truly heterogeneous, and as a result, is not as power efficient as it could be.
In OPERA a new FPGA hardware that will be integrated in a scalable, heterogeneous, datacentre-in-a-box platform will be developed (Figure 1). This hardware will feature multiple high bandwidth, low latency optical interfaces allowing heterogeneous hardware to be interconnected (Figure 2). This allows dramatic scalability and tight coupling of very different processor technologies within a single platform.
OPERA will also deliver an OpenCL tool flow allowing FPGAs, and other processors within the system, to be targeted with a variety of different application types.