Xilinx launches adaptive platform Versal Premium

Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX), a global leader in adaptive and intelligent computing, today announced the launch of Versal ™ Premium, the third largest product family in the Versal ACAP portfolio. The Versal Premium series has a highly integrated and power-optimized network hard core, which is the industry's highest bandwidth and highest computing density adaptive platform. Versal Premium is designed for running the highest bandwidth networks in thermally and space-constrained environments, and for cloud providers who need scalable, flexible application acceleration.

Figure 1.Versal Premium, the world's highest bandwidth and highest computing density adaptive platform

Versal is the industry's first Adaptive Computing Acceleration Platform (ACAP), a revolutionary new heterogeneous computing device category with capabilities far beyond conventional chip architectures. The new Versal Premium is built using TSMC's 7nm process. It integrates software programmability with dynamically configurable hardware acceleration, prefabricated connections and security functions, providing a powerful engine for accelerating the time to market. As the latest product family of Versal ACAP, the Versal Premium series provides up to three times the throughput of current FPGAs and has built-in Ethernet, Interlaken, and encryption engines to create a fast and secure network. This series provides twice the computing density of currently deployed mainstream FPGAs, while also providing flexibility and adaptability to continuously expanding diversified and evolving cloud workloads and network workloads.

Kirk Saban, vice president of product and platform marketing at Xilinx, said, "The Versal Premium series takes ACAP to a new level, with breakthrough integration of hard IP over the network, enabling single-chip 400G and 800G solutions. For the next generation For network and cloud deployments, Versal Premium provides outstanding bandwidth and computing density on a scalable platform that can be easily programmed by software and hardware developers, optimizes acceleration capabilities and significantly reduces total cost of ownership. "

The Versal Premium series is based on the currently available Versal AI Core and Versal Prime ACAP series. Versal Premium is new and unique with its 112Gbps PAM4 transceiver, hundreds of GbE (Gigabit Ethernet) and Interlaken connectivity, high-speed encryption, and built-in DMA, which supports both PCIIX® Gen5 with CCIX and CXL support. Together with the Vitis ™ unified software platform and Vivado® design suite, Versal Premium provides software and hardware developers with a complete solution stack to help maximize productivity.

Faster, more secure networks

As the 5G network is put into operation, network traffic has grown significantly, resulting in increasing demand for optimized power consumption and computational density within the existing space and power consumption range. To support the industry in addressing this challenge, the Versal Premium series offers scalable, adaptive serial bandwidths up to 9Tb / s. The specific method is to use the 112G PAM4 transceiver and integrated network function modules for the core network, metropolitan area network, and data center interconnection (DCI) infrastructure, increase the bandwidth density per port by two times, and reduce the latency by up to 50%.

This prefabricated connection can realize a secure multi-terabit Ethernet (mulTI-terabit Ethernet), which flexibly supports various data rates and protocols. The channelized Ethernet hard core can provide up to 5Tb / s throughput with the smallest footprint, while the high-speed encryption engine can provide up to 1.6Tb / s encrypted line rate throughput, and supports AES-GCM-256 / 128, MACsec And IPsec.

Jim McGregor, principal analyst at TIRIAS Research, said: "As the demand for core networks continues to grow, so does the demand for flexible infrastructure hardware. The new Versal Premium ACAP is based on Xilinx ’s industry-proven communications network Performance and adaptive product portfolio. By integrating power-optimized network hard cores, it will provide powerful power for telecommunications operators to build fast and secure networks, while targeting new data-intensive jobs that are driving network and data center transformation Load, Versal Premium will also provide flexible acceleration capabilities. "

Flexible cloud acceleration

The Versal Premium series is designed to help hyperscale data center users achieve the highest levels of acceleration for diverse data center workloads. Combining over 120 TB / s of on-chip memory bandwidth with customizable memory tiers can reduce data movement and eliminate corresponding key bottlenecks. At the same time, it supports embedded integration of pre-built connections and hard cores into existing cloud infrastructure. From genomics, data analysis and video transcoding to AI inference for speech and image recognition, Versal Premium provides a highly integrated cloud-ready platform that provides breakthrough performance for a diverse workload.

Availability

The Versal Premium series will be sampling to early users starting in the first half of 2021. Documentation is now available and customers can begin prototyping with the Versal Prime evaluation kit immediately. Versal Prime devices have many of the same architectural blocks as Versal Premium devices and support pin migration to Versal Premium.