Maxwell is an innovative FPGA-based computer developed by the FHPCA project to demonstrate the feasibility of running computationally demanding applications on an array of FPGAs. Not only has Maxwell demonstrated the numerical performance achievable from reconfigurable computing, but it can be used as a testbed for tools and techniques to port applications to such systems.
The unique architecture of Maxwell comprises 32 blades housed in an IBM Blade Center. Each blade comprises one Xeon processor and 2 FPGAs. The FPGAs are connected by a fast communication subsystem which enables the total of 64 FPGAs to be connected together in an 8 x 8 toroidal mesh. The processors are connected together via a PCI bus.
Maxwell is available for wider use on application. If you are interested in using Maxwell, please let us know by sending us an email to info@epcc.ed.ac.uk with ‘Maxwell Time Request’ in the subject line.