Mitrionics selects Nallatech Development Platform for Algorithm Accelerator Design Tool
NOVEMBER 17--Mitrionics AB of Lund, Sweden (www.mitrion.com), has selected the Nallatech (www.nallatech.com) BenNUEY family of FPGA-based processing systems as the development platform for its design environment for high-performance computing systems. "We chose Nallatech's solution because it provided a very smooth path to add FPGA processing to conventional computing environments. There was minimum effort and resource required to complete the platform, as everything from drivers to host communication was taken care of," said Anders Dellson, CEO of Mitrionics.
He continued, "What's more, the Nallatech platforms work; the documentation is accurate, and it delivers the promised performance." The Mitrion design tools enable scientists and engineers with programming skills to exploit the power of parallel processing in FPGAs, giving them supercomputer performance for their algorithms, in desktop computers, without needing to design custom hardware. In typical applications such as computer vision, gene sequencing, BLAST analysis, biological simulations and encryption, the complexity and scope of the computer analyses being performed requires massive processing power and flexibility. Using the Mitrion design suite and the Nallatech platform to implement the user's algorithms, customers are already reporting order-of-magnitude performance improvements, spending only weeks on the implementation.
The Mitrion Development Kit from Mitrionics AB includes a compiler, graphical debugger, and code-simulator. The compiler is a fast and simple command-line tool that compiles a typical Mitrion-c program in seconds. It automatically creates c/C++ header-files with the correct function prototype for easy integration with non-Mitrion code. The debugger gives the programmer a hierarchical view of all the parallel processes and their interactions making it easy to find programming errors, performance bottlenecks and inefficient code. All the common debugging tools, such as watchpoints, breakpoints, and call-dependencies are included. The Mitrion-c compiler and debugger are compatible with Solaris, Linux, and Windows.
The BenNUEY platform makes full use of Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGAs to offer a vast processing resource with which to implement complex algorithms. Key features of the Virtex-II Pro family include Multi-Gbit Transceivers, dedicated PowerPC processor cores, and increased memory capacity compared to the Xilinx Virtex-II range, making it ideal for the most demanding computational operations. As part of Nallatech's DIME-II range, the BenNUEY processing boards provide full support for all DIME-II modules, three of which can be housed on the BenNUEY at any time. The DIME-II modules feature a module-to-motherboard bandwidth of up to 10Gbyte/s, meaning that users can easily scale their system to meet the needs of the most demanding applications without having performance compromised by I/O bottlenecks. Support for industry-standard form factors and interfaces ensure easy communication with and integration to existing systems.