AMD Signs on as Cornerstone Sponsor of OpenFPGA, Establishes University of Mannheim Center of Excellence to Advance HyperTransport Research

To expand industry adoption of the AMD Torrenza initiative and an open-standards approach to innovation, AMD (NYSE:AMD) announced today at Supercomputing 2006 it will be the inaugural sponsor for OpenFPGA. OpenFPGA is a non-profit consortium focused on accelerating the adoption and incorporation of reconfigurable computing solutions in high-performance and enterprise computing. OpenFPGA steering group members include many of today’s leaders in high-performance computing including Cray, GE Research, Oak Ridge National Labs and Sandia National Labs.

AMD also announced, in conjunction with the Computer Architecture Group at the University of Mannheim in Germany, the creation of the Mannheim Center of Excellence (COE), for research for HyperTransport™ technology. As the only current academic licensee of coherent HyperTransport (cHT), the research at the Mannheim COE is expected to directly benefit the academic community and the development of next-generation technology that leverages HyperTransport. Early results from the Mannheim COE research include the release of an HTX board for universities and companies that research compute-intensive testing and design applications.

“These activities in support of Torrenza represent fresh thinking in the application of open standards in creating collaborative research environments that can directly benefit customers,” said Michael Goddard, director, Performance Computing, AMD. “Academic customers are already seeing the results of the HyperTransport expertise the Mannheim COE can deliver, while OpenFPGA is leveraging best practices to provide a programming model for FPGAs, one of the co-processing technologies embraced by Torrenza. Ultimately, these efforts will further the adoption of HyperTransport technology and computing based on Direct Connect Architecture, offering new levels of stability and upgradeability in open environments such as AMD64.”

“The Mannheim Center of Excellence has developed a strong expertise in computer architecture and hardware design, especially with the intellectual properties of HyperTransport.” said Dr. Ulrich Bruning, sponsor of the Center of Excellence. “The standardized, open access to HyperTransport gives us the ability to provide commercially available HTX boards that meet the needs of high-value data research for universities and companies all over the world. With AMD as a research partner, we see the Center of Excellence as a unique opportunity to broaden the application areas of high performance processors.”

“Selecting AMD as our cornerstone sponsor was the logical and smart choice for the founding organizations of OpenFPGA. AMD has a long history of working to bring together like-minded innovators to share best practices and ideas in order to continue the adoption of open-standards in the industry and will bring that expertise to the consortium,” said Eric Stahlberg, president, OpenFPGA. “OpenFPGA is extremely pleased to have the support of AMD as the organization aims to realize the full potential of reconfigurable computing for high-performance and enterprise applications.”

AMD first announced its Torrenza Initiative in June 2006 as the industry’s first open, customer-centric x86 innovation platform, capitalizing on the Direct Connect Architecture. In September 2006, AMD announced the Torrenza Innovation Socket, enabling other processor and hardware providers to innovate within a common ecosystem. AMD64, the Open Innovation Platform, continues to allow our customers to address the specialized needs of high-volume IT concerns in open environments.