EU's 3D SoC project to use dual-FPGA development platform

Sundance Multiprocessor Technology's SMT166 dual-FPGA platform has been chosen as the prototyping platform for the European Union’s FP7 FlexTiles 3D SoC project, placing it at the heart of leading research into self-adaptive, high-performance computing.

Headed by Thales Research & Technology, the EU FP7 FlexTiles project is focused on the challenge of leveraging multicore technology to develop energy-efficient, high-performance computer systems. The project will define and develop a programmable, heterogeneous, many-core 3D SoC architecture. The many-core layer, which will integrate GPP and DSP cores, will be associated with a reconfigurable virtualisation layer, featuring a self-adaptive FPGA fabric in an interchangeable tiles concept; and a dedicated tool-flow to improve programming efficiency, reduce the impact on time-to-market and reduce the development costs by 20 to 50%. Sundance’s SMT166 will be used initially to develop, validate and verify the tools to create the FlexTiles 3D SoC. Subsequently, users will be able to utilise the SMT166 as a research and development platform to innovate and prototype products based on the FlexTiles 3D SoC.

“The complexity of the FP7 FlexTiles project demands a powerful and versatile development engine at its heart,” said Dr Philippe Millet, Thales Research & Technology’s High Performance Research Leader responsible for the FP7 FlexTiles project.

The SMT166, which can be integrated into a standard 19″ rack, is designed around two Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGAs. Each FPGA is responsible for routing data to and from half the Sundance Local Bus (SLB) connections on the board. In addition, parallel and serial connections are available for inter-FPGA communications. The SMT166 supports up to four SLB mezzanine modules with a wide range of low-cost options available from Sundance such as a multi-ADC system with 16x channels of 14-bit, 250 MHz ADC inputs; an octal channel SDR platform; or a complete MIMO 8 x 8 RF transceiver set-up. Additionally, the SMT166 supports Sundance’s 12-core DSP module which provides over 10,000 MIPS of fixed point DSP processing power. An optional interface to FMC modules allows users to select from a growing range of add-on modules to suit a wide variety of applications. Each FPGA on the SMT166 is coupled with two banks of DDR3 memory and also supports an identical set of peripheral interfaces, including gigabit ethernet, dual SATA 3.1, one-lane PCIe cable, four-lane PCIe cable and RS232. A single USB 2.0 interface facilitates FPGA programming during development phases.

“The FP7 FlexTiles project will truly exercise the capabilities of our SMT166 FPGA as a development engine,” said Flemming Christensen, managing director of Sundance Multiprocessor Technology. However, as a powerful FPGA environment that effectively integrates two identical FPGA boards into one, it is also suited to a wide variety of other applications such as large-scale embedded systems and high-performance reconfigurable computing, especially those designed with fault tolerance in mind, Christensen said.