Xilinx claims its Alveo artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator cards are designed to dramatically increase performance in industry-standard servers across cloud and on-premise data centers. The cards reportedly enable breakthrough performance improvement at low latency when running key data center applications like real-time machine learning inference as well as video processing, genomics, and data analytics, among others.
The Alveo U200 and Alveo U250 are powered by Xilinx UltraScale+ FPGAs. Users can reconfigure the hardware, enabling them to optimize for shifting workloads, new standards, and updated algorithms without incurring replacement costs.
For machine learning, the company claims the Alveo U250 increases real-time inference throughput by 20x versus high-end CPUs, and more than 4x for sub-two-millisecond low-latency applications versus fixed-function accelerators like high-end GPUs. Moreover, Alveo accelerator cards reduce latency by 3x versus GPUs, providing a significant advantage when running real-time inference applications. And some applications like database search can be radically accelerated to deliver more than 90X, versus CPUs.
Alveo is supported by an ecosystem of partners and OEMs who have developed and qualified key applications in AI/ML, video transcoding, data analytics, financial risk modeling, security, and genomics. Fourteen ecosystem partners have developed applications for immediate deployment. They are Algo-Logic Systems Inc, Bigstream, BlackLynx Inc., CTAccel, Falcon Computing, Maxeler Technologies, Mipsology, NGCodec, Skreens, SumUp Analytics, Titan IC, Vitesse Data, VYUsync and Xelera Technologies. Additionally, top OEMs are collaborating with Xilinx to qualify multiple server SKUs with Alveo accelerator cards including Dell EMC, Fujitsu Limited and IBM with more to come.
Alveo U200 and U250 accelerator cards are available today starting at $8,995. For more details, checkout the Alveo product page.