ASICs and GPU devices can’t pace with the way complex algorithms evolve quicker than silicon design cycles. Therefore, Xilinx introduced Alveo U250 accelerator cards to offer reconfigurable enhancement that can adapt to algorithm optimization.
Alveo U250 is a growing ecosystem of Xilinx. Also, it is a partner application for common Data Center workloads.
What is the Function of Xilinx Alveo U250?
Xilinx Alveo U250 is a data center accelerator card specially designed to facilitate compute-intensive applications like video processing and machine learning. The Alveo U250 data center card complies with the specification of PCle CEM rev3.0 as a standard height card. Also, this card features an active cooling enclosure with full length. The passive cooling enclosure of this card is three-quarters in length.
Xilinx Alveo U250 features Xilinx Virtex UltraScale+TM technology. Also, U250 Accelerator Cards provide reconfigurable acceleration that adapt to algorithm optimizations. Therefore, it supports any type of workload while minimizing the ownership’s overall cost.
Xilinx Alveo U250 is primarily designed to meet the changing demands of the modern Data Center. Therefore, it offers about a 90X performance increase over CPUs. Also, this includes database search and analytics, video transcoding, and more.
Xilinx Alveo U250 features 1.3M LUTs, 64 GB of DDR4 memory, and 11.5K DSP slices. All of these features enable it to deliver enhanced performance over CPUs on key workloads. Alveo U250 is adaptable to constantly changing acceleration requirements. Also, this accelerator card can accelerate any workload without changing any hardware.
Users plug Xilinx Alveo U250 through a PCle slot. Also, the host processor sees the PCle slot as standard PCle devices.
Features of Xilinx Alveo U250
Alveo U250 offers several distinguished features which include:
Highest performance
U250 accelerator card offers about 90X higher performance. This performance is more than that of CPUs1 on key workloads. Also, there are more than 4X higher inference throughput. Alveo U250 offers 3X latency advantage.
Accelerate any workload
You can utilize reconfigurable hardware to adapt faster. Also, U250 is adaptable to any workload like database search and analytics, genomics, and video processing.
Flexible agility and powerful options
The optimized throughput with power efficiency from networking or workloads span across application like deep learning interference. Performance, flexibility, and acceleration have been more crucial as there is more demand on data center infrastructure. Also, fixed CPU acceleration and fixed function hardware can’t meet these rapidly changing demands. Therefore, Xilinx Alveo U250 is the right solution that can meets these increasing demands.
Innovation integration
Xilinx Alveo U250 offers adaptable and powerful FPGA compute fabric and high speed interfaces. Also, these features offer solutions to some challenging compute and storage acceleration workloads. Alveo accelerated solutions with HPE products. Therefore, these cards span a wide range of workloads and applications like computational storage, financial services, and networking.
Accessible and adaptable compute acceleration
Xilinx Alveo U250 are suitable for low-latency servers, high-bandwidth, and storage applications. Also, this helps to bring more value into hybrid cloud deployments.
Specifications of Xilinx Alveo U250
The Xilinx Alveo U250 accelerator card complies with the specifications of PCle CEM rev 3.0 as a standard height card. There are four 288-pin DDR4 DIMM socket in this card. These sockets comprise single rank DIMMs which can operate data rates of about 2400 MT/s.
Alveo U250 accelerator card comprises two 100G interfaces. Each of these interfaces consists of a 4-lane QSFP28 connector. This connector accepts about 5W modules. Also, the deployment shell’s current versions don’t support QSFP connectors. In addition, a single QSFP cage assembly houses every connector.
Xilinx Alveo U250 features a shielded micro-USB maintenance port at the Input/Output bracket. Also, Xilinx have validated U250 for interoperability in the servers like DELL Power Edge R730 and Power Edge R740. The U250 card includes XCU250 FPGA. Also, the XCU250 FPGAs utilize stacked silicon interconnect (SSI) technology to provide power efficiency and exceptional bandwidth.
Therefore, this technology combines several superior logic regions to enable increased density.
Other specifications of Alveo U250 include:
- 77 GBs/DDR memory badwith
- 1,341,000 Look-up Tables (LUTs)
- 38TB/s internal SRAM bandwidth
- Passive or active thermal options
- 33.3 Peak NT8 TOPs
Applications of Xilinx Alveo U250
Xilinx Alveo U250 is ideal for use in several applications like:
- Genomics
- Data analytics
- Machine learning
- Video and image processing
- Security
- Cloud computing
Operating Conditions of Xilinx Alveo U250
Alveo U250 and its thermal management device should operate at a time/temperature gradient of 15 degree Celsuis per hour in its ambient environment. The thermal management device is the top plate, heat sinks, backplate, and fan.
Also, Alveo U250 and its thermal management device should operate in a relative humidity that ranges from 8% to 85%. You should store the Alveo U250 in a non-operating condition in a relative humidity range of 5% to 90% and an ambient temperature range of -40oC to 75oC.
Future Trends of Xilinx Accelerator Card
Xilinx Alveo U250 is an accelerator card with several benefits and features. Also, accelerator cards are like expansion cards specifically designed to accelerate various workloads in cloud servers. High-performance computing and data centers are also applications of these cards.
These days, accelerator cards are ideal for use in cryptocurrency mining and other complex operations. Once you plug an accelerator card through the Pcle Slots, it accepts instructions complex operations. The Xilinx U250 is much more efficient compared to microprocessors. Also, these accelerator cards feature additional algorithms to execute complex tasks that the host processor can’t perform.
The accelerator card market share is in various segments based on accelerator type, application, and processor type. Xilinx Inc. is one of the key players in the accelerator market. Also, there are other players in the accelerator card market such as Oracle Corporation and Achronix Semiconductor Corporation. Xilinx and other key players adopt partnership and agreement as their major developmental strategies.
Conclusion
The Xilinx Alveo U250 is widely used in applications to manage workload. Also, Xilinx Alveo U250 helps to enhance cloud computing performance in cloud servers. The use of AI in accelerator cards has impacted the growth of the Accelerator Card market. Also, Xilinx Alveo U250 offers exceptional features and benefits.
