Xilinx Virtex-5 LXT Platform FPGAs used in NEC's SX-9; fastest vector supercomputer

Xilinx, Inc. announced that NEC Corporation has adopted the high-performance Virtex-5 LXT platform for its SX Series, SX-9, Vector Supercomputer, the world’s fastest supercomputer. With its PCI Express Endpoint blocks and RocketIO GTP transceivers, NEC chose the Virtex-5 LXT platform for its ability to support the unique SX I/O interface.

NEC’s SX-9 Supercomputer features the world’s first CPU capable of a peak vector performance in excess of 100 GFLOPS (billion floating-point arithmetic operations per second). The SX-9 Supercomputer can realize processing performance of 839 TFLOPS (trillion floating-point arithmetic operations per second), making it the world’s fastest vector supercomputer. Compared to scalar supercomputers with their numerous general-purpose CPUs, the SX-9 Supercomputer excels at scientific computation and ultra fast computation of large data. It also provides highly effective performance in meteorological forecasting, fluid analysis, environmental simulation, and simulations of unknown materials, such as nanotechnology and macromolecular design. NEC has sold more than a thousand SX series products worldwide.

The LXT platform is a comprehensive, fully compliant protocol solution that gives designers the greatest ease of use for adopting serial connectivity for a wide range of applications. The Virtex-5 LXT platform delivers the industry’s first FPGA with built-in PCI Express Endpoint and tri-mode Ethernet MAC blocks, giving designers an off-the-shelf solution that saves time, reduces power consumption and frees up valuable FPGA fabric resources. The PCI Express Endpoint blocks save users up to 10,000 LUTs and two watts of power as compared to a soft IP core implementation. The Virtex-5 LXT platform also features the industry’s lowest power 65nm transceiver, typically consuming less than 100mW per channel at 3.2 Gbps.

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