PCI-SIG Certifies Achronix VectorPath Accelerator Card for PCIe Gen5 x16 @ 32 GT/s

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Santa Clara, Calif., May 22, 2023 – Achronix Semiconductor Corporation, a maker of FPGAs and embedded FPGA (eFPGA) IP, today announced that its VectorPath accelerator card featuring a Speedster7t FPGA has been certified by PCI-SIG for PCIe Gen5 and is, according to the company, the first FPGA accelerated CEM add-in card certified for PCIe Gen5 x16 at 32 gigatransfers per second (GT/s) on the PCI-SIG Integrator’s list.
VectorPath S7t-VG6 accelerator cards are designed to reduce time to market when developing high-performance compute and acceleration functions for AI, ML, networking and data center applications and are shipping today.”Achronix continues to drive acceleration in the high-performance FPGA add-in card market.” said Craig Petrie, Vice President at BittWare. “Achieving PCI-SIG Gen5 certification is an important milestone. Our customers can be assured of the highest PCIe bandwidths and have confidence that VectorPath cards will interoperate with Gen5 servers.”
As the only FPGA-enabled PCI-SIG CEM add-in card to be certified for PCIe Gen5×16 at 32 GT/s, VectorPath cards are powered by the Achronix Speedster7t AC7t1500 FPGA, delivers the highest bandwidth I/O and memory interfaces seamlessly connected using the FPGA industry’s first two-dimensional network on chip or 2D NoC. It includes high-speed data interfaces supporting 400G Ethernet and PCIe Gen5 which are ideal for high-performance networking and compute applications.
In addition, Speedster7t FPGAs support high-bandwidth GDDR6 memory interfaces which provide over 4 terabits per second (Tbps) of memory bandwidth and are the only FPGAs to support low-cost GDDR6 memory.
To provide high-performance compute capability, Speedster7t FPGAs include machine learning processors (MLPs) designed to address challenging AI/ML workloads which require high-speed mathematical computation capability, support for various number formats and closely-coupled local memories for coefficient storage — all of which are included in the MLPs. The MLPs provide designers with 61 teraoperations per second (TOPs) which can be highly utilized due to the efficient architecture of Speedster7t FPGAs.
“Achronix is incredibly pleased to announce PCI-SIG Gen5 certification for our VectorPath accelerator cards,” said Steve Mensor, VP of marketing at Achronix. “Our customers are using VectorPath in a variety of challenging, bandwidth-intensive applications including automated speech recognition (ASR), network security, and high speed test environments. Certifying for PCIe Gen5×16 at 32 GT/s with PCI-SIG provides our customers with the confidence that VectorPath cards can be utilized to support the highest rate PCIe systems available today.”
VectorPath accelerator cards were jointly developed with BittWare, a Molex company, to offer key features including:

  • Speedster7t AC7t1500 FPGA with 692K 6-input LUTs
  • QSPF-DD and QSFP56 cages supporting 400GbE and 200GbE
  • 16 GB GDDR6 – 8 banks with two independent, 16-bit channels per bank
  • PCIe Gen5 ×16 at 32 GT/s
Achronix Semiconductor Corporation is a fabless semiconductor corporation based in Santa Clara, California, offering high-end FPGA-based data acceleration solutions, designed to address high-performance, compute-intensive and real-time processing applications. Achronix is the only supplier to have both high-performance, high-density standalone FPGAs and licensed eFPGA IP solutions. Achronix Speedster7t FPGA and Speedcore eFPGA IP offerings are further enhanced by ready-to-use VectorPath accelerator cards targeting AI, machine learning, networking and data center applications. All Achronix products are fully supported by the Achronix Tool Suite which enables customers to quickly develop their own custom applications.Achronix has a global footprint, with sales and design teams across the U.S., Europe and Asia.