While FPGAs have been renowned for how hard they are to program, help may be on the way. Today Acceliz launched an App Store marketplace called AccelStore for FPGA applications. Currently, the marketplace hosts accelerator functions for data compression, search-and-replace, image encoding and security running on both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and OVH platforms and delivering performance improvements from 10x to more than 1000x compared to traditional pure software implementations.
Our customers are constantly looking for ways to boost their efficiency and improve service quality. FPGAs therefore represent a powerful tool for them,” said Nicolas Savides, VP of Strategic Partnerships at OVH. “AccelStore is an essential part of our plan for making FPGA acceleration a reality for our customers.”
The initial accelerator functions readily available on the AccelStore marketplace include:
- High compression Gzip, from partner CAST, provides the highest level of data compression acceleration in the cloud, with acceleration factors of 30x or more.
- Ultra Fast Find & Replace, from partner Nagase (using the Axonerve™ IP), provides the fastest text-based find and replace capability for documents with expected acceleration factors over 1000x.
- JPEG Encoding, from partner A.L.S.E., provides fast encoding of images in JPEG format.
- TRNG, a True Random Number Generator from partner Secure-IC which, beyond offering significant acceleration in random number generation, also offers, the highest levels of security, thanks to the use of FPGAs. This TRNG is the only Cloud option that has been validated against NIST FIPS SP-800 90 and BSI AIS 31 statistical tests, industry standards for True Random Number Generation.
A wide range of additional accelerator functions are currently being developed by partners and will be available in the coming weeks. Accelize will also add support for additional Cloud Service Provider’s FPGA instances soon.
AccelStore is the first and only platform-independent marketplace for FPGA accelerator functions, bringing the parallel processing benefits of FPGA technology to the widest base of Cloud users,” said Jean-Yves Brena, CEO of Accelize. “It was created to be an app-store like marketplace of ready-to-use accelerator functions developed by our partners for a broad range of cloud users. We are pleased to be joined by leading companies such as CAST, Nagase, ALSE, Secure-IC and many others, which are leveraging the marketplace to extend the reach of their expertise to a new and wider Cloud user base.”
AccelStore provides a simple and fast way to evaluate and deploy accelerator functions on host applications. The associated RESTful API functions enable cloud users to launch any AccelStore accelerator function on any supported Cloud FPGA instance in less than five minutes. This simplifies the evaluation process and demonstrates the value of FPGA acceleration for specific workloads without having to invest much time or money. These API functions can also be integrated into the end application providing the acceleration capability with minimal modification.
Having Cloud users be able to evaluate ready-to-use accelerator functions faster than it takes to get a cup of coffee is a major benefit for us to demonstrate and disseminate our technology among Cloud users,” said Nikos Zervas CEO of CAST. “Through AccelStore Cloud users can now experience the benefit of FPGA accelerated GZIP compression and deploy it in their Cloud application instantly. The data driven pay-per-use model also provides predictability on cost which is so important when deploying new technologies.”
