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Actually, large data centers are using FPGAs at the network edges. The FGPA does data compression and/or encryption. This optimizes network bandwidth and does n
by daly 10y ago
Actually, large data centers are using FPGAs at the network edges. The FGPA does data compression and/or encryption. This optimizes network bandwidth and does not tie up the CPU. I expect to see distributed network routing code so the communication can be peer to peer with no routers. I expect to see firewalls specific to a node (e.g. only web traffic from the traffic splitter). I expect to security code (e.g. no exfiltration from the confidential store-only machine).
All of this without involving the CPU... ASIC is too expensive but FPGAs are great. Intel bought Altera (about 45% of the FPGA market) which annoys me / excites me because I use Altera. I expect the next Gen CPUs to have an embedded FPGA so you can make your own instructions.
- fach 10y agoWhat does "peer to peer with no routers mean"? Also, with all the benefits of FPGAs, you seem to gloss over power consumption. Any concern there?
- devonkim 10y agoI understand p2p without routers to be a star topology network where every device is connected to the other without any need for indirection. FPGAs are a bit piggy on power consumption historically given they've mostly been used for smaller shop engineers prototyping and validating designs from an HDL without needing to use a fab and have not been used in datacenter use cases often. But I'd expect newer FPGAs should be able to turn off power to unused LUTs instead of forcing everything to stay powered on. Using FPGAs that are massively oversized for the logic they implement makes little sense anyway even if you have a super high pipeline stage count.
- mattbillenstein 10y agoASIC is expensive at low volume, but cheaper than an FPGA at high volume, so it depends on the application.
- 0xcde4c3db 10y agoFrom what I've heard, "high volume" is now so high that hardly anybody really expects cost savings from "true" (i.e. new full layout, one customer) ASICs anymore. The vast majority of "new", "custom" chips are sold to multiple customers and/or are light customizations of existing designs.
- mattbillenstein 10y agoRight, I think this has been a trend for awhile -- standard product ASICs ending up in multiple brands of similar products. Just the masks for manufacturing these large chips on the newer processes are millions of dollars -- not even factoring in all the design work to get to that point. But they achieve far higher density than you can get with an FPGA.
- honkhonkpants 10y agoLarge data centers are doing compression and encryption at the application layer on ordinary Intel CPUs.
- bogomipz 10y agoWho is doing this? What "large data centers"? Who are they doing it for? Most colo facilities just sell transit if anything. What is "distributed network routing code"? Traffic splitter?
- jacobwil 10y agoAdditionally, FPGAs offer better cryptographic algorithm agility than ASICs. With an FPGA you stand a much better chance of being able to upgrade your expensive network hardware with quantum resistant algorithms.
- astrange 10y agoAES is quantum safe already. Do you really need hardware offload for that less than once per connection key exchange?