According to Bloomberg, the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) market is expected to top eleven billion USD by the end of 2027. The Digital Journal predicts that this will rise to $13.6 billion in 2031. Major players in technology and finance are investing heavily in these little logic boards—FPGAs are powering the self-driving simulations in Elon Musk’s Dojo supercomputer.
What’s with all the industry buzz around FPGAs? Skyrocketing demand for customizable integrated IT infrastructure is a likely culprit. Incorporating FPGAs into your system architecture gives you greater flexibility and adaptability for a variety of business and multimedia applications.
Learn about what FPGAs can do for your business below.
What is a field-programmable gate array?
An FPGA is an integrated circuit that can be programmed by the end user. Most laptops and desktop computers arrive with the configuration of logic gates locked at the factory. Heavy-workload servers, especially those used in high-frequency trading applications, often demand a more tailored fit between hardware and software than personal computers.
FPGAs are programmed with logic cells that act as registers one day and lookup tables the next, depending on the particular needs of your business at any given time. This versatility is a major bonus in a time of upheaval, but FPGAs have a few other perks that can bolster the functionality of your IT infrastructure.
How can FPGAs benefit your business?
If you are looking for system architecture that supports enterprise-specific workloads, FPGAs are the right choice for you. Unlike integrated circuits that cannot be altered after leaving the production facility, FPGAs can be tailored to fit your unique processing needs.
There are four major ways that FPGA can benefit your business:
Risk management.
Because FPGAs can work in parallel, it is possible to use them to create redundancy and thereby reduce service interruptions. An FPGA working on less intensive computations can be programmed to offload some of its capabilities to assist an overloaded processor. Everything stays online despite spikes in website traffic, and you don’t lose out on a key trade when the stock market unexpectedly goes into a frenzy.
Total cost of ownership.
In the same way that skis waxed for the current weather conditions require less effort to manoeuvre than shop-waxed models, optimized FPGAs will outperform their factory-locked counterparts in power consumption. Even if the initial price of an FPGA is steeper than that of a standard integrated circuit, the savings on electricity and heat dissipation will save your business money in the long run.
Flexibility.
FPGAs can be reconfigured, installed in different servers, and adapted to suit changing demands. Their modularity makes them ideal for more volatile industries. Devote all your processing power to training an AI one day, and use the same processors for generating massive lookup tables the next. FPGAs are made to be reused and recycled.
Speed.
Ever run a new program on your PC and get the spinning wheel of doom? When you’re working with a static integrated circuit, the slightest mismatch between software and hardware configurations can seriously slow things down. When you engineer the logic gates in the processor itself to support a program’s functionality, the program will run much more smoothly. FPGAs especially shine when it comes to reducing latency, with the capability to formulate a response in one clock cycle that would take hundreds or thousands of cycles for a traditional processor.
Applications for FPGAs
Servers with Field-Programmable Gate Arrays support high frequency trading, digital content creation, gaming, and artificial intelligence, along with any other industry that seeks versatility and efficiency in their computer workstations. Let’s look at the ways FPGAs are implemented in three different industries:
High-frequency trading.
Ultra-low latency is the watchword in high-frequency trading. FPGAs are used in HFT servers to execute trading algorithms 1000x faster than software utilizing factory-locked processors.
Video game design.
Want to play the vintage arcade games of your childhood on your personal laptop? Video game enthusiasts at FPGA Arcade are using the flexible architecture of FPGAs to emulate 80s classics on 21st century machines. Try following a tutorial for setting up your favourite game on a cheap FPGA training board. The hands-on experience should give you an idea of the programming required for FPGAs, and spark a few ideas for implementing them in your IT infrastructure.
Cryptocurrency mining.
For increased efficiency in power consumption and a faster clock rate, crypto speculators are turning to FPGA mining. The FPGA mining guide characterizes FPGAs as faster than GPUs (the current big player in the crypto mining market) and more flexible than ASICs (another processor that has recently caught miners’ attention). Adoption rates of FPGAs in this industry are likely to skyrocket in the near future. Stay on the cutting edge of this paradigm shift in cryptocurrency by investing in FPGAs for new mining architecture.
How will you use Field-Programmable Gate Arrays?
Investing in a high frequency trading server like Hypertec’s CIARA ORION HF210-G5 gives you the option to customize your new workstation with efficient, performance-boosting FPGA modules. With top-of-the-line hardware and FPGAs configured by IT experts, your new server will bring your enterprise to the next level.
Get a quote for your high-capacity FPGA computing server today.
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