Cornerstone Sponsor  AMD  
  About NewsletterWorking GroupsWikiFAQsPresentationsSponsor OpenFPGA
  

OpenFPGA
Mission & Objectives
News & Activities
Newsletter
Web Resource Index
Mailing List
Forums
Presentations
Working Groups
Technology Roundtable
   Discussions Schedule

FAQs
OpenFPGA Wiki
Meeting Minutes
Board of Directors
Bootstrap Contributors
OpenFPGA Benchmarks
Sponsor OpenFPGA

Membership
Membership Information
Membership FAQs
Apply for Membership
Organizations
   with Current
   OpenFPGA Members

 
OpenFPGA Newsletter
Edition 1
June 16, 2006

Headlines

Upcoming Events of Interest
Welcome to OpenFPGA
OpenFPGA Priorities Moving Forward
Introducing the OpenFPGA Technology Roundtable
Open FPGA Needs Your Input


Upcoming Events of Interest   [Back to top]

ISC 06 – Dresden, Germany
June 27-30, 2006
http://www.supercomp.de

Reconfigurable Computing Systems will be featured as part of this event. OpenFPGA will be co-hosting a ‘birds of a feather’ session at ISC06 with Linux Networx and FHPCA. Learn more about where reconfigurable computing is headed for the future. Be sure to attend the BoF when attending ISC 06 this year. It promises to be a very exciting and important event.

(Thanks to Allan Cantle (Nallatech) for making this opportunity possible.)

Reconfigurable Systems Summer Institute
Champaign, Illinois
July 10-14, 2006
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Conferences/RSSI/

The RSSI event is a great event to meet with colleagues working in the area of FPGA applications development. Around this event, several vendors are holding user group meetings around their technology. On Thursday, July 13, OpenFPGA will be hosting open discussions around the active OpenFPGA working group topics as part of RSSI. Discussions around central issues for portable reconfigurable computing applications are certainly expected.

Register now at the site above to be a part of this important upcoming event.

(Thanks to David Pointer and the crew from NCSA for hosting this important event.)

Welcome to OpenFPGA   [Back to top]

Welcome to the first edition of the OpenFPGA Newsletter! It’s an exciting time to be involved with reconfigurable computing, with daily developments that impact the entire industry. As the worldwide computing community increasingly appreciates the role of reconfigurable technology in computing, the pace of innovation is only increasing. Talk about exciting, compared to changes on the horizon, we haven’t seen anything yet!

This newsletter promises to be an important part of the OpenFPGA effort, bringing developments and opportunities to light as the efforts forge ahead. The challenge to make applications employing reconfigurable computing truly portable over a range of applications and emerging hardware types is huge, and certainly cannot happen without the input, support and efforts of the entire community. The newsletter will help fill a critical role in keeping information flowing and opening doors for opportunities.

Here’s to building the future!

OpenFPGA Priorities Moving Forward   [Back to top]

OpenFPGA has a driving objective to make it easy and affordable for individual companies and organizations to adopt reconfigurable and FPGA computing as part of computing solutions in both supercomputing and enterprise computing applications. This involves developing solutions of portability and long-term supportability of FPGA-based applications, helping keep development costs down. It’s a big goal, particularly with technology advancing so rapidly. In the end, it will be worth it with the creation of a vibrant new industry sector for application computing.

A second driving objective for OpenFPGA is to move the industry forward by building a community to share best practices in the emerging field of FPGA application development. Providing opportunities to learn, share and discuss solutions and challenges among experts and those not so expert will shape future progress. Without question, everyone in OpenFPGA has before them the chance to help shape advances in new technologies, tools and solutions that will be part of the future of reconfigurable computing.

Introducing the OpenFPGA Technology Roundtable   [Back to top]

The OpenFPGA Technology Roundtable is one of the enduring features of OpenFPGA. Having grown out of the ad-hoc steering group created in the early days of OpenFPGA, the Technology Roundtable is where ideas bind together and new ideas born in the discussions. A bi-weekly event, the Roundtable brings together the multiple interests at work in OpenFPGA including advisory group leaders, industry leaders, the OpenFPGA board, working group leads, and participants from OpenFPGA. Participants interested in being part of the Technology Roundtable discussions should get in touch with the working group leads through the OpenFPGA website, www.openfpga.org/working.shtml

OpenFPGA Needs Your Input!   [Back to top]

FPGA Success Stories
Recent discussions with the community, such as was held at the OpenFPGA Birds-of-a-Feather session at the Cray User Group meeting, identified some key areas where input from the community is critical. OpenFPGA is actively seeking example and demonstration cases where FPGA technology has been successfully used to accelerate applications and critical algorithms. If you have such success, and would like to showcase your success at the OpenFPGA website, please contact Eric Stahlberg
(eas@osc.edu) for details.

High-Level Language Lead
Join the Technical Round Table discussions. OpenFPGA is seeking a volunteer to help organize the High-level Languages (T-HLLANG) working group. If you are interested, send an email to openfpga-hllang-owner@osc.edu.

What Do You Want to Hear About?
This is your OpenFPGA newsletter. If you have suggestions or thoughts regarding the newsletter, don’t hesitate to send a reply with your comments.

Volume 1. June 16, 2006