Sundance Launches SMT166 Dual-FPGA Development Platform

By DE Editors

Sundance Multiprocessor Technology has launched the SMT166 dual-FPGA platform for R&D into the use of large FPGAs for high-performance reconfigurable computing and large-scale embedded systems applications, as well as system-on-chip (SoC) simulation. Sundance also announced that the SMT166 has been chosen as the prototyping platform for the European Union's FP7 FlexTiles 3D SoC project.
 
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 compute 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 virtualization 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 utilize the SMT166 as an R&D platform to 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 Philippe Millet, Thales Research and Technology's high performance research leader responsible for the FP7 FlexTiles project. "We are pleased to have secured Sundance Microprocessor Technology's expertise for the FlexTiles project, and in the Sundance SMT166 FPGA board we have a development engine that will enable us to drive the project forward with confidence."
 
The SMT166, which can be integrated into a standard 19 inch 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. 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 at Sundance. "However, as a powerful FPGA environment that effectively integrates two identical FPGA boards into one, it is also ideally 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."

For more information, visit Sundance Multiprocessor Technology.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company's website.