Introduction to Reconfigurable Supercomputing

This book covers technologies, applications, tools, languages, procedures, advantages, and disadvantages of reconfigurable supercomputing using Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). The target audience is the community of users of High Performance Computers (HPC) who may benefit from porting their applications into a reconfigurable environment. As such, this book is intended to guide the HPC user through the many algorithmic considerations, hardware alternatives, usability issues, programming languages, and design tools that need to be understood before embarking on the creation of reconfigurable parallel codes. We hope to show that FPGA acceleration, based on the exploitation of the data parallelism, pipelining and concurrency remains promising in view of the diminishing improvements in traditional processor and system design. Table of Contents: FPGA Technology / Reconfigurable Supercomputing / Algorithmic Considerations / FPGA Programming Languages / Case Study: Sorting / Alternative Technologies and Concluding Remarks

Dr. Marco Lanzagorta is Technical Fellow and Director of the Quantum Technologies Group of ITT Corporation. In addition, Dr. Lanzagorta is an Affiliate Associate Professor at George Mason University and co-editor of the Synthesis Lectures on Quantum Computing published by Morgan & Claypool. Dr. Lanzagorta received a PhD in theoretical physics from Oxford University and in the past he worked at the US Naval Research Laboratory, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, and the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Italy. Dr. Stephen Bique is a computer scientist in the Center for Computational Science at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. He received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Joensuu in Finland. Previously, Dr. Bique was Associate Professor at Virginia State University, Assistant Professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and he held a comparable position at the University of Kuopio in Finland. Hehas also worked as software developer and consultant for PACT Corporation in Munich, Germany on the "XP128" reconfigurable system-on-a-chip. Dr. Stephen Bique is a computer scientist in the Center for Computational Science at the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. He received a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Joensuu in Finland. Previously, Dr. Bique was Associate Professor at Virginia State University, Assistant Professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and he held a comparable position at the University of Kuopio in Finland. He has also worked as software developer and consultant for PACT Corporation in Munich, Germany on the "XP128" reconfigurable system-on-a-chip.