Starting with Altera OpenCL-on-FPGAs

SVpressgraphicAltera has been very busy adding resources and has kicked off the beginning of June with opening up their OpenCL-program for the general public.
Only Stratix V devices are supported, but that could change later.

Below are all pages and PDFs concerning OpenCL I’ve found while searching Altera’s website.

Evaluation of CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs as Acceleration Platforms

Altera wanted to know where they could compete with GPUs and CPUs. For a big company their comparisons are quite honest (for instance about their limited access-speed to memory), but they don’t tell everything – like the hours(!) of compilation-time. The idea is that you develop on a GPU and when it’s correct, you port the correctly working software to the FPGA.

If you don’t have any experience working with their FPGAs, best is to ask around.

Medical_OpenCL
Image taken from Altera website.

Whitepapers

The below PDFs provide real-world examples.

Information Filtering.

Fractal Video Compression in OpenCL.

Radar Processing.

Developer’s boards

General overview of what openCL on FPGAs can do for the developer.

Altera’s Preferred Board Partner Program for OpenCL. Bittware, Nallatech and PLDA.

OpenCL Development Kits and Cards.

Online training

Introduction to Parallel Computing with OpenCL (30 minutes). Get an overview of the OpenCL standard and the advantages of using Altera’s OpenCL solution.

Writing OpenCL Programs for Altera FPGAs (1 hour). Understand the basics of the OpenCL standard and learn to write simple programs.

Running OpenCL on Altera FPGAs (30 minutes). Get to know the Altera SDK for OpenCL and learn to compile and run OpenCL programs on Altera FPGAs.

Documentation

Altera SDK for OpenCL release notes.

Implementing FPGA Design with the OpenCL Standard – starter’s guide.

Altera SDK for OpenCL – Programming Guide.

Altera SDK for OpenCL – Optimization Guide.

Altera SDK for OpenCL – Getting started Guide.

More info

You can always call or mail us for OpenCL training, tailored for your needs. For more information on Altera’s offerings get in touch with your Altera-contact. Last but not least, check out Altera’s OpenCL forum. If you find more information, put them in the comments and I’ll add them.

I am very curious about your experience using OpenCL on FPGAs – let me know what you liked and disliked about it.

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2 thoughts on “Starting with Altera OpenCL-on-FPGAs

  1. activedaily

    Nice shot, what about other FPGA vendors, Xilinx, Achronics, etc?

    • StreamHPC

      Xilinx comes second half of 2014 with tool-support for their latest FPGAs. I don’t know about other vendors.

      Do you have interesting information?

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