Altera opens world of FPGAs to software programmers with SDK and off-the-shelf boards for OpenCL

HONG KONG: Altera Corp. announced the broad availability of its SDK for OpenCL and supported third-party production boards.

Availability of the SDK for OpenCL enables software programmers to access the high-performance capabilities of programmable logic devices.

Altera also announced a Preferred Board Partner Program, allowing third-party board vendors to work closely with Altera to design optimized production boards based on Altera’s programmable devices. The availability of supported third-party boards through the Preferred Board Partner Program and an SDK for OpenCL enables software programmers to easily target high-performance FPGAs using a high-level language.

Altera’s SDK for OpenCL allows software programmers to take their OpenCL code and easily exploit the massively parallel architecture of an FPGA. Software programmers targeting FPGAs achieve higher performance at significantly lower power compared to alternative hardware architectures.

"Because FPGAs enable parallel processing, they are critical for specialized server workloads that demand real-time performance. We are pleased that our clients are now able to take full advantage of this technology on Power Systems using Altera's SDK for OpenCL," said Robert L. Swann, VP, IBM Power Systems. "With this standards-based approach, our clients can leverage a vibrant ecosystem of commercial and research contributions to accelerate emerging compute intensive workloads."

The SDK for OpenCL is designed to increase system performance in highly data-parallel computing applications featured in financial, military, broadcast, medical and a variety of other markets. Altera’s OpenCL solutions are supported by a robust ecosystem consisting of board partners, design partners, software tools and university collaboration.

Altera and its partners provide the tools, hardware, libraries, reference designs and design resources necessary for developers to implement their OpenCL designs into FPGAs and reduce time-to-market.

The Altera Preferred Board Partner Program for OpenCL ensures third-party production boards are optimized for current Altera device architectures. Initial preferred board partners included in the program are BittWare, Nallatech and PLDA, with additional board partners to be added in the future.

“For years, Altera and BittWare have partnered to deliver timely high-end signal processing board-level solutions that significantly reduce technology risk for our mutual customers,” said Darren Taylor, senior VP of sales and marketing at BittWare. “Leveraging the latest hardware technology from Altera, which now includes an SDK for OpenCL, we are able to dramatically reduce the complexity for applications in the computing, financial and military markets.

“An OpenCL implementation provides an ideal fit for Nallatech’s hardware-accelerated computing solutions,” said Allan Cantle, president and founder of Nallatech. “We simplify the deployment of FPGAs in heterogeneous platforms via direct purchase of our cards or pre-integrated in leading vendors’ high density servers and blades. Customers developing high-performance computing applications using Altera’s SDK for OpenCL will benefit from a dramatic increase in performance per watt, per dollar over traditional computing architectures.”

“PLDA has a successful track record of supporting Altera’s customers with their high-performance applications,” said Stephane Hauradou, VP and CTO of PLDA. “The SDK for OpenCL will open up a significantly broader group of software developers who can now fully leverage Altera’s leading-edge solutions.”

The Altera SDK for OpenCL is currently available for download on Altera’s website. The annual software subscription for the SDK for OpenCL is $995 for a node-locked PC license.