Case study: Computational Leaps in astrophysics

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is Australia’s national research organisation involved in the construction of the world’s largest radio astronomy antenna array, which currently contains 420 Alveo U55C accelerator cards for processing radio waves to study the early universe and explore galactic evolution.

5AP920.1505-01 With the Alveo V80 accelerator card, CSIRO plans to reduce the size and cost of the board and reduce the number of accelerator cards required by up to 66 per cent, while handling new signal processing tasks from the telescope’s 131,000 antennas. Taking into account potential reductions in card, server, rack space and power consumption, this jump in computing power per card is expected to result in a total cost of ownership (TCO) reduction of up to 20%.

Grant Hampson, research engineer at CSIRO’s Division of Space and Astronomy, said: “We initially adopted the Alveo product line because of its ability to process large amounts of sensor data in real-time. For our next generation beamformers and correlators, reducing total cost of ownership is imperative. The Alveo V80 accelerator card is a technological step up from the previous generation Alveo U55C card, providing a compact and energy efficient solution with a cost-effective board area.”

Simplify development for FPGA designers

The Alveo V80 accelerator card is fully available for traditional hardware developers via the Alveo Versal Example Design (AVED) and is now available on GitHub. AVED simplifies hardware startup with traditional FPGA and RTL processes and is based on the common Vivado tool process. The example design uses a pre-built subsystem implemented on an AMD Versal adaptive SoC and specifically targeted to the Alveo V80 accelerator card, providing an efficient starting point.

5AP920.1505-01 At the system level, the Alveo V80 compute accelerator card simplifies system integration and provides a fast path to mass production. By using pre-validated deployment cards, design teams can avoid PCB integration, inventory management, and product lifecycle management tasks.

Alveo V80 has gone into volume production and is now available for purchase from AMD and authorized resellers. Check out www.amd.com/v80 to learn how the new Accelerator Card can redefine computing for your infrastructure. Read the product profile and data overview for detailed specifications, or contact an expert for more information.

① : Based on the specifications published in the AMD Alveo Product Selection Guide that are publicly available as of April 2024. (ALV-13).

Based on an independent “early trial experience” performance and cost analysis estimate conducted by CSIRO in October 2023, the existing implementation of 420 Alveo U55C accelerator cards was compared to the expected implementation of 140 AMD Alveo V80 accelerator cards. The estimated total cost of ownership is calculated over a three-year period and includes the projected cost of power and cooling operating expenses. All performance and cost savings claims are estimates provided by CSIRO and have not been verified by AMD. Performance and cost-effectiveness are subject to various assumptions and variables and may change based on system configuration and other factors. The results are specific to CSIRO and may not be typical. For more details, see Figure (3) (ALV-16).