News Release

Dec 18, 2007

PGPG2 Released

We have released a pipeline-designing utility, PGPG2 (Pipeline Generator for Programmable GRAPE, the 2nd generation ¹). With PGPG2, users can describe arithmetic computations using a high-level language similar to C. The utility converts the description into a pipeline logic for GRAPE-7 and a user library to handle it.

Key Features

• Converts a pipeline design described in a high-level language into a hardware logic described in VHDL. Typically, a 10 to 100 lines of description in the high-level language is converted into a 1,000 to 10,000 lines of description in VHDL.
• A pipeline logic generated by the utility is combined with an interface logic (a logic to control data transfer between GRAPE-7 and the host), so that it can be synthesized using Altera's QuartusII Web Edition (charge free). FPGA devices on a GRAPE-7 are configured with the synthesized logic.
• A schematic of the logic, a bit-level emulator, a logic for simulation, its test vectors, and a user library to handle the pipeline from the host computer are also generated.
• PGPG2 can be freely downloaded under the MIT License (partly GPL).

Usage Examples

To modify existing pipelines:

A user can modify number format and bit width of an existing pipeline, such as the pipeline for gravitational-force calculation equivalent to GRAPE-5, so that it suits the user's own application. In a case accuracy required for the application is lower than that offered by the existing pipeline, the pipeline can be redesigned with fewer hardware resources. Such a modification may cause increase of the number pipelines integrated into the FPGA devices.

To design totally new pipelines:

A user can design a totally new pipelines for his/her own purpose. Previous works in several fields of computational science are showing that, in some case, hardwired pipeline can accelerate calculation speed of molecular dynamics (MD), smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH), and boundary integral equation method (BIEM).

• 1: PGPG2 is a utility designed and developed by K & F Computing Research Co. based on PGPG (Hamada et al., 2005). There exists another extension of PGPG, named PGR (Hamada & Nakasato, 2005). The concept of "pipeline description by a high-level language" is proposed by Dr. Nakasato (Aizu University) in 2006.
• Contact: info@kfcr.jp