In this episode of Radio Free HPC, Rich, Dan, and Henry discuss the recent buzz surrounding FPGAs. After being sidelined by accelerators, they’re increasingly being used in appliances.

Big vendors are talking about FPGAs not only for appliances but for general-purpose systems as performance assists. Are we headed back to the future?
The guys discuss the ins and outs of FPGAs and why, in some cases, they could be a huge win for the organizations that implement them.

But is the architecture flexible enough? For enterprise and Big Data, perhaps it is. If you need to perform the same algorithms over and over again, FPGAs could be a perfect fit.

As with all things tech, there are a few cautionary notes to be sounded. Amassing more and more appliances can lead down a tricky road. Will their use in workload-optimized systems lead to vendor lock-in? Can you really teach an old FPGA new tricks? And can they be weaponized?

Most importantly: how are servers like cattle? Tune in to find out…

Check the Radio Free HPC website for new episodes and more great content from Rich Brueckner of insideHPC, Henry Newman of Instrumental, Inc., and GCG’s Dan Olds.