New FPGA server ‘offers twice the typical density in compute and network resources’

BittWare, a Molex company, will introduce the TeraBox 1400B server supporting four double-width FPGA boards in a 1U high rackmount chassis at the ISC High Performance show.  

Fitted with BittWare XUP-VV8 boards, this server offers twice the FPGA and network density of a standard eight-board, 4U server. BittWare is targeting the 1400B at high-end compute, network and signal processing acceleration users who require maximum density in FPGA resources and network ports.

“Our newest TeraBox server is designed around the unique needs of FPGA users, including front-panel network ports,” noted Craig Petrie, vice-president of marketing at BittWare. “Getting a 1400B delivered with boards installed and ready to go means users can get started quickly and focus on their application development or deployment.”

BittWare designed the TeraBox 1400B server with the high-end FPGA user in mind. Up to four double-width FPGAs are secured side-by-side at the front of the chassis with their network ports exposed. For maximum FPGA network port density, the server can be populated with four of BittWare’s new XUP-VV8 boards with four Molex QSFP-DD cages per board. This four-board configuration brings sixteen QSFP-DD cages to the server’s 1U front panel for up to 32x 100 GbE links using QSFP-DD to QSFP-28 breakout cables. Users can also opt for QSFP-DD to SFP+ breakouts for up to 128x 10/25GbE links.

With boards at the front, BittWare was able to design dedicated fans to direct air from the servers front to back, giving the FPGA boards the cool air ahead of CPUs and storage. With four double-width PCIe x16 slots, users can choose from a wide range of BittWare boards featuring Xilinx UltraScale+ or Intel Stratix 10 FPGAs. The server’s motherboard has two Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs, with each CPU dedicated to just two FPGA boards, perfect for heterogenous applications that require a combination powerful CPU and FPGA resources. In addition, 24 DIMMs (12 per CPU) provide host memory up to 3TB DDR4 and up to 2TB DDR4 total memory on the FPGA boards (up to 4 DIMMs per board). QDR or on-package HBM2 memory options are also available with select FPGA boards.

In today’s data centre, where minimising rack space is critical and high-end FPGA users are running complex workloads in environments, BittWare’s TeraBox 1400B server provides an ideal solution.  These users require front-panel network port access and the highest density possible of FPGAs and CPUs. They are supported by the product quality and support of TeraBox server – BittWare’s premium FPGA server brand which now includes a range of 1U to 5U servers and expansion chassis options.