Unleash Unparalleled Performance with Intel Hyperflex Architecture

Unleash Unparalleled Performance with Intel Hyperflex Architecture

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• The Need for a New Architecture
• Understanding the Hyperflex Architecture
  • Advantages of the Hyperflex Architecture
  • Performance Gains in Intel Agilex FPGAs
• Hyperflex Core Architecture
  • Traditional FPGA Architecture
  • The Introduction of Hyperflex Core Architecture
• Hyper Registers and Fine-Grained Approach
  • Bypassable Hyper Registers
  • Benefits of Fine-Grained Approach
• Hyper Retiming, Hyper Pipelining, and Hyper Optimization
  • Hyper Retiming
  • Hyper Pipelining
  • Hyper Optimization
• Impact on Power and Hold Times
  • Impact on Power Consumption
  • Hold Times and Restructuring
• Clock Trees and Clocking Options
  • Synthesizable and Programmable Clock Tree
  • Comparison to Conventional Clocking
• Design Flow and Optimization Techniques
  • Stage 1: Hyper Retiming
  • Stage 2: Hyper Pipelining
  • Stage 3: Hyper Optimization
• Conclusion
• Resources

Introduction

🌟 Welcome to the Intel Hyperflex Architecture Overview for Intel Agilex Devices. In this training, we will delve into the Second-generation Hyperflex architecture and explore how it enables high-performance gains in Intel Agilex FPGAs. By the end of this Course, you will have a comprehensive understanding of the architectural advancements and their impact on FPGA designs.

The Need for a New Architecture

🌍 Next-generation systems demand increasingly higher performance and throughput, which conventional FPGA architectures struggle to deliver. This necessitates the development of a new architecture that addresses these limitations. The Hyperflex architecture tackles these performance challenges head-on, allowing FPGA designs to achieve unparalleled performance gains.

Understanding the Hyperflex Architecture

Advantages of the Hyperflex Architecture

🚀 The Hyperflex architecture offers several advantages over traditional FPGA architectures. By introducing Novel concepts such as hyper registers and fine-grained design approaches, it enables high levels of performance that were previously unattainable. These advantages include improved performance, lower power consumption, and enhanced productivity.

Performance Gains in Intel Agilex FPGAs

💪 With the Intel Agilex family, Intel introduces the second generation of the Hyperflex architecture. These devices deliver a significant 40% increase in performance compared to previous high-performance FPGAs. By optimizing designs for the Hyperflex architecture, designers can reap the benefits of their investment and achieve unparalleled performance and productivity.

Hyperflex Core Architecture

Traditional FPGA Architecture

🧱 Traditional FPGA architectures are heavily reliant on registers and consist of logic cells that implement general logic functionality. However, the structure of these architectures often introduces delays in signal propagation due to interconnect inefficiencies.

The Introduction of Hyperflex Core Architecture

🔍 The Hyperflex core architecture is a groundbreaking innovation that addresses the limitations of traditional FPGA architectures. While concepts like retiming, pipelining, and loop optimization exist in current FPGA architectures, the approach taken with the Hyperflex architecture represents a significant improvement that enables unprecedented levels of performance.

Hyper Registers and Fine-Grained Approach

Bypassable Hyper Registers

🔌 Hyper registers are bypassable registers located throughout the routing segments and block inputs in the core Fabric. Unlike existing architectures, the Hyperflex architecture adopts a fine-grained approach to register placement. This allows for greater flexibility in inserting register stages and provides designers with more options for optimizing their designs.

Benefits of Fine-Grained Approach

✨ The fine-grained nature of the Hyperflex architecture enables three key performance improvement strategies: hyper retiming, hyper pipelining, and hyper optimization. By leveraging these strategies, designers can significantly enhance the performance of their designs and unleash the full potential of the Hyperflex architecture.

Hyper Retiming, Hyper Pipelining, and Hyper Optimization

Hyper Retiming

⚡ Hyper retiming involves moving existing registers from traditional locations to hyper register locations, thereby reducing critical paths and improving overall performance. This technique is automatically applied by the software tools, resulting in improved performance without requiring significant design modifications.

Hyper Pipelining

🌊 Hyper pipelining entails adding new registers to the design to enable further retiming into hyper register locations. This approach increases the total number of registers in the design, leading to a reduction in individual register-to-register paths and further enhancing performance.

Hyper Optimization

🔄 Hyper optimization focuses on restructuring design loops to minimize or eliminate their negative impact on performance. This stage requires thorough analysis of the design's functionality and RTL coding to identify areas for improvement. By employing hyper optimization, designers can push the performance of their designs even further.

Impact on Power and Hold Times

Impact on Power Consumption

💡 Despite the increased number of hyper registers, the impact on power consumption is minimal. Hyper registers, being simple D flip-flops, require fewer transistors than traditional ALM registers, resulting in lower static power consumption. Additionally, the software tools optimize dynamic power consumption, making hyper register usage more efficient.

Hold Times and Restructuring

🕘 Concerns about hold times with the increased number of hyper registers are alleviated by the design process itself. The software tools ensure that adjacent hyper registers are never enabled, eliminating hold time issues. Furthermore, the Hyperflex architecture is designed to provide better hold times, allowing for improved overall performance.

Clock Trees and Clocking Options

Synthesizable and Programmable Clock Tree

⏰ The Hyperflex architecture introduces a new synthesizable and programmable clock tree. This clock tree is synthesized locally during compilation, only building the tree where it is needed. It offers better clock skew control, lower variability, and enables higher clock rates. The flexible clocking structure allows for up to 32 independent clocks within a single sector of the chip.

Comparison to Conventional Clocking

🔄 In contrast to conventional FPGA clocking, the programmable clock tree synthesizes clock segments tailored to specific areas of the FPGA. This approach results in lower power dissipation and reduced clock skew. By synthesizing the clock tree only where it is needed, power consumption is optimized, and unnecessary clocking resources are mitigated.

Design Flow and Optimization Techniques

Stage 1: Hyper Retiming

⚙️ Hyper retiming is the first step in optimizing FPGA designs with the Hyperflex architecture. By automatically moving registers to hyper register locations, critical paths are reduced, leading to performance improvements. This stage is often sufficient to achieve significant performance gains in many designs.

Stage 2: Hyper Pipelining

🔁 Hyper pipelining builds upon hyper retiming by adding new registers to the design. These additional registers enable further retiming into hyper register locations. The increase in registers reduces individual register-to-register paths, resulting in improved performance.

Stage 3: Hyper Optimization

🔍 Hyper optimization involves restructuring design loops to ameliorate their impact on performance. This stage requires a deeper understanding of the design's functionality and may involve more substantial modifications to the RTL code. While it requires additional effort, hyper optimization can unlock even higher clock speeds and performance gains.

Conclusion

🎉 The Hyperflex architecture for Intel Agilex devices brings a new era of FPGA performance. With its fine-grained approach, abundance of hyper registers, and innovative clocking options, designers can achieve unprecedented levels of performance and productivity. By harnessing the power of hyper retiming, hyper pipelining, and hyper optimization, designers can unlock the full potential of the Hyperflex architecture and deliver FPGA solutions with exceptional performance.

Resources

📚 To further enhance your understanding of the Intel Hyperflex architecture and design strategies, explore the following resources:

• Intel FPGA Landing Pages for specific technology areas (e.g., transceivers, DSP, OpenCL, high-speed gigabit interfaces)
• Intel FPGA Community Forum for design assistance and support
• Intel FPGA Training Courses for comprehensive learning opportunities