Fixstars to Release Cell-Based Accelerator Board

Apr 7, 2008 18:25 Yosuke Ogasawara, Nikkei Electronics

Fixstars Corp will release the "GigaAccel 180" accelerator board featuring the Cell microprocessor. It allows 180GFLOPS computing performance when incorporated in workstations.

Target applications are financial simulations, science technology calculations and image processing for medical purposes.

The accelerator board uses a single unit of the 2.8GHz Cell Broadband Engine (the official name of the Cell). A 4-Gbyte DDR2 memory is mounted as well. It is equipped with a PCI Express x16 interface for connectivity with workstations as well as two 1Gbps Ethernet ports.

The accelerator board supports Linux. It also supports the "IBM Software Development Kit for Multicore Acceleration v3.0" so that it can maintain compatibility with other Cell-embedded hardware.

With the OEM accelerator boards being produced by IBM Japan Ltd, the company will market the product under the brand name of Fixstars. The company will start receiving orders from April 10, 2008, and begin shipments in mid August 2008. Excluding tax, the standalone GigaAccel 180 is priced at ¥880,000 (US$8,580), while the package with a workstation is priced at ¥980,000.

The company said it is planning to transplant its program library and application software for image processing, signal processing, financial simulations and codec, for example, into the GigaAccel 180 and to offer the accelerator board as a packaged product primarily targeting financial, medical, oil exploration, semiconductor manufacturing and multimedia industries.

Fixstars will showcase and demonstrate the GigaAccel 180 at the "2008 NAB Show" to be held in Las Vegas from April 14 to 17, 2008.

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