Samplify’s APAX IP Core speeds CPUs, GPUs, app processors, and ASIC/FPGA-based SoCs

The folks at Samplify have  announced the availability of their new APAX hardware IP core that boosts the performance of  multi-core CPUs, GPUs, application processors, and both ASIC-based and FPGA-based system-on-chip (SoC) devices. The APAX IP accelerates throughput of memory, I/O, and storage by 2X to 8X for high-performance computing (HPC) and cloud computing, as well as consumer electronics and mobile devices performing applications such as image acquisition, video processing, and 3D graphics.

“Multi-core CPUs are hitting the memory wall,” said Al Wegener, CTO and founder of Samplify. “With each new process node, the number of processor cores on a die can double with Moore’s Law, but the throughput of memory, I/O, and storage fails to keep up with this growth.  Hence, the performance of multi-core applications is increasingly memory, I/O, and storage bound.  APAX is the only solution that shatters the memory wall by accelerating the throughput of DDRx, SAS/SATA, SSD, PCIe, Ethernet, and Infiniband, by as much as eight times.”

The APAX technology is a universal numerical data encoder that operates on all integer or floating-point data types, as well as images and wireframe meshes.  APAX achieves typical encoding rates of 2:1 to 8:1 without affecting the results of computing or imaging applications.  The low-complexity APAX IP core supports an industry-standard AXI bus interface, serving multiple clients in an SoC or motherboard chipset:  the memory controller, the flash or disk storage controller, and the I/O controller.  The low latency of the APAX IP core even makes it suitable for implementation between Level 3 and Level 2 cache.  The APAX IP core is fully compatible with APAX software products, and the included Linux software driver allows seamless switching between HW and SW implementations of the APAX encoder and decoder.

Availability
The APAX IP core is available immediately for SoCs and FPGAs from Samplify and its sales partners.
Samplify will also demonstrate APAX running on the Xilinx Zynq All Programmable SoC accelerating computing applications running on two ARM Cortex-A9 processors by more than 200 percent, in booth 703 at the ARM TechCon 2012 conference in Santa Clara, October 31 to November 1. For more information visit the Samplify website at www.samplify.com/apax-ip

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