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Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mati365 1y agoWhat's special about this?
- hmry 1y agoThese chips usually cost $1k-$2k when bought new individually from the manufacturer
- h33t-l4x0r 1y agoAre we talking about physical products or cloud services?
- oefrha 1y agoThere’s zero cloud service in the article, only physical boards decommissioned by a hyperscaler. Asking about cloud services tells me you only read the title.
- h33t-l4x0r 1y agoI read the title and was confused why the article did not match it.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- debugnik 1y agoCloud should have been title-cased (they make this mistake almost every time in the article), they bought an FPGA decommissioned by Alibaba Cloud, the subsidiary.
- RossBencina 1y agoNot only that, but you can develop for this particular model with the no-cost Vivado license.
- stephen_g 1y agoYeah Xilinx’s pricing curve is incredibly steep. Probably makes sense since they’re used in things like defence (radar, electronic warfare) so they can sell them in low quantities for huge prices and people will still buy them. But with decent volume they get pretty cheap - for example there are video converters they have FPGAs in them that you can buy for less than you can buy the FPGA part in single qty - which means the manufacturer of the device is getting the FPGA for 5-10% of list price.
- hmry 1y agoWanted to buy a GOWIN FPGA recently, like on Sipeed's dev boards. Mouser wanted $37 for it, more than twice what the whole devkit costs. Meanwhile the list price from the manufacturer is $3, but it's completely impossible to order anything as an individual. Not sure why they designed a hobbyist beginner-friendly dev board around a part from a company that makes all their products impossible to buy...
- phendrenad2 1y agoSo people are going to desolder the chip? This doesn't seem very hobbyist-doable. Are there people out there who build products based on scrapped FPGAs from ebay?
- jevinskie 1y agoThere are certainly people removing high-end FPGAs from surplus/scrap commercial products and reselling them.
- duskwuff 1y agoFor what it's worth: if you have a FT2232H adapter hanging around (and if you don't, you should consider getting one), those adapters can easily be flashed to be compatible with Vivado: https://docs.amd.com/r/en-US/ug908-vivado-programming-debugging/Programming-FTDI-Devices-for-Vivado-Hardware-Manager-Support https://docs.amd.com/r/en-US/ug908-vivado-programming-debugg...
- NoiseBert69 1y agoAt work we always have 20-30x FT2232H on stock. They are super useful - they speak GPIO, I2C, SPI, parallel FIFO, etc. And their pyFTDI Python lib is great.
- Joel_Mckay 1y agoJust be careful as the counterfeit FTDI chips can have bad internal regulators etc. (Usually those small Red UART and GPIO breakout hobby PCB.) Usually better to use the vendor supplied JTAG tools, or build your own with known good silicon. Recovering FPGA hardware is always a mixed bag of what IP and documentation is available to bring up the board. Looks like nice silicon though. =3
- NoiseBert69 1y agoNot all FTDI series are faked. Only the most popular FT232 as far as I know. Same for ST. Only the STM32F103 is a well known bad actor in the market.
- bloggie 1y agoIn my experience the f103 clones fix silicon bugs and some even have improved peripherals (like i2c)
- NoiseBert69 1y agoProblem is that they still using the ST HAL which is not aware of the fixes in the background. 90% of the standard stuff will work. But as soon as you dig into the exotic modes bad things will happen.
- NoiseBert69 1y agoCool stuff. Reminds me of recycling used Mining- or LED-Controllers as they can be bought on Ali and have quite capable FPGAs.
- matesz 1y agoReminds me how Alibaba innovated in database space with a cluster of FPGAs doing LSM compaction with custom MySQL storage engine - https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3299869.3314041 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3299869.3314041 Basically they achieved massive improvements in throughput and latencies vs RocksDB, for some operations even an order of magnitude. They even offered this as a service, but eventually pulled out. Not sure if they are still using it, but I was surprised that pretty much nobody else, as far as I am aware, is using any hardware acceleration for repetitive database workloads.
- donavanm 1y agoAWS was using in house hardware query acceleration in redshift a few years back https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aqua-advanced-query-accelerator-for-amazon-redshift/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aqua-advanced-query-acc.... I dont know how much attention its getting (or performance its bringing) since AWS started focusing more in P&L the past year or two.
- foft 1y agoIf you are interested in FPGA PCIe or PCI cards there are also a lot of Gidel boards available second hand. ProcSpark/ProcStar etc. The official software is proprietary and they often contain multiple FPGA devices so there is again an exercise working out the pinouts etc if you want to simply use them with Quartus. I got one with a massive Stratix IV on. A Kintel UltraScale+ is quite a prize though, really nice write up.
- jevinskie 1y agoThe top-level Verilog module and Vivado .xdc file (contains pin mappings, timing constraints, etc) from Gidel for the HawkEye 20G-48. [0] No SDK from Gidel though. My back burner project for them is to create a PCIe TLP sniffer/MiTM/device emulator by hooking up two together via 10 GbE for relaying TLPs with one of the remaining 10 GbE connection going to a host PC for the sniffed/injected TLPs. The Aria 10 FPGA PCIe hard IP allows for either root or endpoint mode so I “just” need to draw the rest of the owl, avoiding any Quartus IP modules that would make the setup non-transparent. I’m not sure what using a 10 Gbit link for PCIe will be like with faster devices but fail0verflow got away with TLP proxying with 115200 baud UART. [1] [0]: https://www.ebay.com/itm/335904285904 https://www.ebay.com/itm/335904285904 [1]: https://fail0verflow.com/media/33c3-slides/#/11 https://fail0verflow.com/media/33c3-slides/#/11
- haunter 1y ago>The board also came with a travel case But why? Are these boards frequently removed and physically moved around in data centers? Or was that an eBay seller thing to protect it?
- a012 1y ago> But why? To bring them to the field, because they’re _field_ programable gate array /s
- brookst 1y agoThat’s why the trowel, I suppose.
- random_duck 1y agoLol, nice one.
- rkagerer 1y agoLots still available on eBay https://www.ebay.com/itm/167626831054 https://www.ebay.com/itm/167626831054 I guess there aren't any GPIO's wired up to headers or such? Any suggestions on a project for it that's a good fit?
- lnsru 1y agoThat’s really nice! Cheap hardware was gone during covid years completely. And now beautiful Kintex for 200$ again. I was super interested in these when I was younger. 2x SFP with PCIe reminds me on NetFPGA project. This card is perfect for it!!
- nbernard 1y ago> Lots still available on eBay Probably not for long: only 7 available now...
- djoldman 1y ago""" dmesg log : [ 0.388790] pci 0000:00:00.0: [14e4:2712] type 01 class 0x060400 [ 0.388817] pci 0000:00:00.0: PME# supported from D0 D3hot [ 0.389752] pci 0000:00:00.0: bridge configuration invalid ([bus 00-00]), reconfiguring [ 0.495733] brcm-pcie 1000110000.pcie: link up, 5.0 GT/s PCIe x1 (!SSC) [ 0.495759] pci 0000:01:00.0: [dabc:1017] type 00 class 0x020000 ... Since most people might not be intimately as familiar with PCIe terminology, allow me to quickly document what is going on here. 0000:00:00.0: is the identifier ... [14e4:2712]: is the device’s [vendor id:device id], these vendor id identifiers are assigned by the PCI standard body to hardware vendors. Vendors are then free to define there own vendor id’s. The full list of official vendor id’s and released device id can be found : https://admin.pci-ids.ucw.cz/read/PC/14e4 https://admin.pci-ids.ucw.cz/read/PC/14e4 or in the linux kernel code... """ Wouldn't it be really nice if dmesg had more info about devices?
- random_duck 1y agoAgreed, it would be so nice. But I can also understand they might want to keep dmesg as learn as possible.
- eqvinox 1y ago> Wouldn't it be really nice if dmesg had more info about devices? No, it wouldn't, that'd just make the kernel another 1.5MB larger. It's large enough as it is. And if there is a driver for the device, the driver will print more things anyway. Remember you're dealing with low-level system interfacing here. You're expected to bring some knowledge.
- synergy20 1y agojust received a kv260 board, i thought vivado is free to use?
- brandonpelfrey 1y agoYou can typically get a free license for some boards, especially evaluation boards.
- 15155 1y agoEverything is free if you continually renew your trial every 30 days.
- sweetjuly 1y agoVivado has free and paid tiers. The free tiers ("WebPack") support their a myriad of their smaller devices (which includes the Kria boards). The larger devices (Virtex, etc.), however, are generally only supported by the paid versions of Vivado. It's inconvenient for hobbyists, sure, but for enterprise uses the cost of Vivado for a team is largely inconsequential (which I suspect is why they get away with this).
- duskwuff 1y agoThe licensing scheme is not terribly robust, either; there are a number of cracked (full) licenses floating around if you know where to look. Given that AMD makes most of their money on hardware sales, and the software is only really useful in conjunction with that hardware, I suspect they don't care very much.
- jevinskie 1y agoIt is clear from the quality that all vendors of EDA software actively hate their paying customers. Just wonder - why are EDA tools just now starting to get HiDPI support? I’m pretty sure Altera, Xilinx/AMD, etc haven’t bought HiDPI monitors for their own developers!
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y agoIs anyone aware of any examples of FPGAs used to implement neural nets or other connectionist architectures? What's exciting about FPGAs is that they make "custom" chips affordable for colleges and even individuals... At this point in time, with the AI world fixated on LLMs, it seems that there's an opportunity for small groups/individuals to use FPGAs to experiment with more animal-like ground-up approaches to intelligence.
- le-mark 1y agoWhy the downvotes? My understanding ai is not a use for fpgas because models require a lot of ram (preferably fast ram) and fpga themselves don’t have a lot of it. An fpga will have pins you can attach fast ram, but then board layout and layering traces becomes very non trivial. Hence gfx cards (and a lot of them) are more suited.
- throwaway48476 1y agoFPGA will never be as fast as an ASIC. NV data center chips cant do graphics anymore, just compute.
- random_duck 1y agoFunny you say that, if you look at the git repo for the blog there are a bunch of asic screenshots currently being committed.
- HarHarVeryFunny 1y agoSure - not as fast or flexible, but relatively cheap and reprogrammable - good for experimentation, maybe for building a real-world proof-of-concept of a learning architecture ?
- imtringued 1y agoThis doesn't actually matter in practice, because either nobody produces your specific architecture in the first place, or the existing architectures are significantly more power inefficient. FPGAs run at reduced clock speeds, but then again, you'd have to run the GPU or CPU at the same clock speed to obtain the same energy efficiency.
- brookst 1y agoSerious competence porn. I love it.
- jhallenworld 1y agoI just used the Raspberry-PI V to bring up the PCIe interface on a Lattice Certus-Pro NX "Versa" board, it's very convenient. What's cool is that the Raspberry-PI V is just fast enough to run modern desktop software, including (ack!) Microsoft Teams. I was able to give a live demo of my FPGA design by sharing the desktop during a conference call. My only complaint is, of course, lack of SoC documentation from Broadcom. Say what you will about Intel, but they do provide full chip documentation if you go through their NDA process. With it, I made a very nice FPGA PCIe environment on Xeon Ivy Bridge: it let me save all of the PCI config registers, then reconfigure the FPGA, then reprogram them and have the chip show up on the bus without having to reboot the server or re-enumerate. The trick is to temporarily set the root complex bit to disable PCIe error detection during the reconfiguration process. (Was using Altera Stratix-IIgx at the time). There is possibly another way to this, but haven't tried it: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32334870/how-to-do-a-true-rescan-of-pcie-bus https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32334870/how-to-do-a-tru... But even aside from that, with the documentation you have access to a lot of error reporting which is extremely useful during PCIe bring-up.
- akamoonknight 1y agoAh, that's a fancy trick! I remember many a time making Linux real angry with my PCIe fiddling. I believe in the end we got Partial Reconfiguration set up, where the PCIe portion of the device would not be reprogrammed but we could reload the rest. It was definitely a trade off though in terms of layout planning and space reservation.
- eqvinox 1y ago> Say what you will about Intel, but they do provide full chip documentation if you go through their NDA process. Unfortunately, we are unable to support individuals or smaller entities. Please reach out to your local Intel sales office for assistance. Are we talking about the same Intel? (This is the reply I got trying to sign their NDA in order to access datasheets. Even my 15-people employer wasn't worth their time.)
- jhallenworld 1y ago
- rfoo 1y agoThat's cool. For those who happened to be in China right now, there's the same listing on a Chinese marketplace (idlefish) for only 480 CNY (~68 USD). That's... better than too good to be true. I'm going to have a try.
- nanibot 1y agoI checked out the listings on idlefish and I was able to find some with 350 CNY (~48 USD). That seems like a really really good deal. Please, do keep us updated with your findings after you've purchased it.
- mk_stjames 1y agoI don't see if they found out the pinouts for the SFP connectors on the back. If those were documented, and the PCI-e lanes were documented, I could see someone having some real fun with these building some bespoke fiber networking gear. SFP transceivers are just that- transceivers, they will spit out what you put in, so you could even build some interesting bespoke fiber optic signaling gear with these, and a PCIe backplane, or just solo.
- random_duck 1y agoThe SFP connector pinnouts are in the pinnout section.
- eqvinox 1y ago> SFP transceivers are just that- transceivers, they will spit out what you put in This is only valid for ≤10Gbaud SFP(+) transceivers. SFP28 have CDR chips in them that will balk at doing anything other than supported rates, e.g. {25.78125, 26.5625, 27.952…} Gbd. Even supporting 10.3125Gbd is not a given. (You can put other things on them, but you need to match a supported rate.)
- johndoe0815 1y agoIs there any RAM on the board except for the on-chip block RAMs? The ebay listing mentions 128 MB, but I wonder if this can be trusted since some other information in the "item specifics" overview is clearly bogus ("7-Function Digital Multimeter Shield").
- epolanski 1y agoNot gonna lie. This ai craze makes me think that: - there's not much of a moat long term in inference hardware (can't comment about training) - the models themselves are a commodity that can be swapped any day - the products are coming but not at the pace one thought. It's been 3 years since Chatgpt launched and we still have no decent service where I can inject documents and ask questions.
- YZF 1y agoWhat do you mean by inject documents and ask questions? Doesn't Gemini let you do that, e.g. NotebookLM or Gem? (not sure what's the equivalent products from the other vendors)
- epolanski 1y agoNot a great experience still, doesn't scale, not precise enough, still looks to be rag based, so you get the usual problems rag can't solve due to chunking, etc.
- fnord77 1y agoSo... what are FPGAs usually used for in this context?