Intel announced that it is now shipping a bigger FPGA. The Intel Stratix 10 FPGA combines a quad-core ARM A53 processor with up to just over 5.5 million logic elements, hybrid memory cube interface and ultra-fast I/O. Microsoft has hinted that BrainWave is expecting to use (and already working with) Intel Stratix 10 FPGAs for its deep learning and AI inferencing throughout its global platform. Intel states that the Stratix 10 can hit over 10 TFLOPs of single precision DSP performance. Communications is still one of the, if not the biggest, market for FPGAs.

The Intel Stratix 10 Product Family

The Intel Stratix 10 product family is expansive. There are 10 or 20 product lines depending on how you count. Here is a table with some of the key specs:

For those more accustomed to CPU specs, we are told that the compute range is somewhat akin to the deltas across the entire Intel Skylake-SP range from 4 to 28 cores.

Key Specs for the ARM Cortex-A53 Powering the Intel Stratix 10

For those who want to know more about the ARM Cortex-A53 SoC at the heart of the Intel Stratix 10 CPU here are some key specs:

Processor Quad-core 64 bit ARM Cortex-A53 MPCore processor at up to 1.5GHz

L1 instruction cache (32 KB)

L1 data cache (32 KB) with error correction code (ECC)

Level 2 cache (1 MB) with ECC

Floating-point unit (FPU) single and double precision

ARM NEON media engine

ARM CoreSight debug and trace technology

System Memory Management Unit (SMMU)

Cache Coherency Unit (CCU)

Scratch pad RAM 256 KB

HPS DDR memory DDR4, DDR3, and LP DDR3 (Up to 64 bit with ECC)

Direct memory access (DMA) controller 8 channels

EMAC 3X 10/100/1000 Ethernet media access controller (EMAC) with integrated DMA

USB on-the-go (OTG) controller 2X USB OTG with integrated DMA

UART controller 2X UART 16550 compatible

Serial peripheral interface (SPI) controller 4X SPI

If you want to learn more about the Intel Stratix 10 family, check out the official site here.