Altera

Application demands have outpaced the conventional processor's ability to deliver. High-performance computing (HPC) applications are now demanding more than processors alone can provide, creating a technology gap between demand and performance. The solution is hardware acceleration that augments processors with application-specific coprocessors. This paper explains why the right combination of price, performance, and ease-of use, along with significant power savings, comes from using field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) as the basis of coprocessor design.