Intel FPGAs run deep learning in Microsoft Azure cloud
The company claims that these advances have resulted in the industry’s fastest public cloud network, and new technology for acceleration of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) that replicate “thinking” in a manner that’s conceptually similar to that of the human brain.
The advances, Microsoft says, offer performance, flexibility and scale, using super low latency networking to exploit what is said to be the world’s largest cloud investment in FPGAs – that will assist a wide bariety of user to process “Big Data.” Azure’s FPGA-based Accelerated Networking reduces inter-virtual machine latency by up to 10x while freeing the Intel Xeon processors for other tasks.
Russinovich also outlined a new cloud acceleration framework that Microsoft calls Hardware Microservices. The infrastructure used to deliver this acceleration is built on Intel FPGAs. This new technology will enable accelerated computing services, such as Deep Neural Networks, to run in the cloud without any software required, resulting in large advances in speed and efficiency
“From our early work accelerating Bing search using FPGAs added to the Intel Xeon processor-based servers, to this new Hardware Microservices model that underlies the Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) infrastructure that Mark discussed yesterday afternoon, Microsoft is continuing to invest in novel hardware acceleration infrastructure using Intel FPGAs,” said Doug Burger, one of Microsoft’s Distinguished Engineers.
“Application and server acceleration requires more processing power today to handle large and diverse workloads, as well as a careful blending of low power and high performance—or performance per Watt, which FPGAs are known for,” said Dan McNamara, corporate vice president and general manager, Programmable Solutions Group, Intel. “Whether used to solve an important business problem, or decode a genomics sequence to help cure a disease, this kind of computing in the cloud, enabled by Microsoft with help from Intel FPGAs, provides a large benefit.”
Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich’s presentation is available: https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2017/B8063
Intel’s FPGAs for computing and storage: www.altera.com/solutions/industry/computer-and-storage/overview.html
If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :
