Achronix Launches FPGA IP Blocks with 400GbE Connectivity

Achronix has introduced the ANIC (Achronix Network Infrastructure Code) which is a collection of FPGA IP blocks designed for high-performance networking pipelines. The ANIC blocks are optimized to accelerate networking pipelines for Speedster7t FPGAs and the VectorPath Accelerator Card, including 400 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) connectivity and PCIe Gen 5.0.

The solution aims to cater to data centre operators, cloud service providers, and telecommunications companies who want to develop SmartNIC solutions. ANIC's modular architecture allows customers to select only the necessary SmartNIC components for their application.

Each IP block is pre-verified with closed timing, speeding up the design process. With partial reconfiguration, users can modify solutions in the field. By building on top of ANIC, customers can deploy custom IP functions such as key-value stores, intrusion prevention, and de-duplication to offer highly parallelized, value-added network solutions at 400 GbE network speeds. ANIC modular IP works on Speedster7t AC7t1500 FPGAs and VectorPath S7t-VG6 Accelerator Cards, utilizing the Speedster7t architecture's 2D network on chip (2D NoC).

The 2D NoC enables high-speed connectivity between the FPGA fabric and high-speed interfaces such as 400 GbE, PCIe Gen 5.0, GDDR6, and DDR4/5. Moreover, Speedster7t FPGAs also come equipped with machine learning processors (MLPs) distributed throughout the FPGA fabric. Each MLP is a configurable compute-intensive block that supports various formats, including direct support for TensorFlow's bfloat16 format and block floating-point (BFP) format, with up to 32 multipliers supporting integer formats from 4 to 32 bits and different floating-point modes.