Abstract

Evaluating the performance of Space Plasma Simulations using FPGA's
Ben Popoola - University of Sussex Paul Gough - University of Sussex
This paper analyses the performance of a custom compute machine, that performs electrostatic plasma simulations, using Field Programmable Gate Array's (FPGAs). Although FPGA's run at slower clock speeds than their off-the-shelf counterparts, the processing power lost in the reduced number of clock cycles per second is quickly recovered in the high degree of spatial parallelism that is achievable within the devices. We describe the development of the architecture of the machine and its support for the C-programming language via the use of a cross-compiler. Results are presented and a discussion is given on the constraints of FPGAs in particular and the hardware design process in general.

Evaluating the performance of Space Plasma Simulations using FPGA's

Ben Popoola - University of Sussex
Paul Gough - University of Sussex

This paper analyses the performance of a custom compute machine, that performs
electrostatic plasma simulations, using Field Programmable Gate Array's
(FPGAs). Although FPGA's run at slower clock speeds than their off-the-shelf
counterparts, the processing power lost in the reduced number of clock cycles
per second is quickly recovered in the high degree of spatial parallelism that
is achievable within the devices. We describe the development of the
architecture of the machine and its support for the C-programming language via
the use of a cross-compiler. Results are presented and a discussion is given
on the constraints of FPGAs in particular and the hardware design process in
general.

Last update: Wed Jun 12 14:26:53 2002 WEST