Nallatech

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Nallatech is a computer hardware and software firm based in Camarillo, California, United States. [1] The company specializes in field-programmable gate array (FPGA) integrated circuit technology applied in computing. As of 2007 the company's primary markets include defense and high-performance computing. [2] Nallatech was acquired by Interconnect Systems, Inc. in 2008, [3] which in turn was bought by Molex in 2016. [4]

Contents

Background

The company was founded by Allan Cantle ('Nalla' comes from 'Allan' spelled backwards) in 1993 and was backed by over £4 million of equity finance provided by Scottish Equity Partners and 3i. Cantle was the CEO for the firm, [5] later moving into president and CTO roles.

In 2005 Nallatech announced a Scottish group known as the FPGA High Performance Computing Alliance, to work on a supercomputer. [6]

Nallatech's direct sales team operates in two main geographic areas, one in the US and one in UK covering UK, Europe and rest of the world. The team in the USA (Nallatech, Inc.) sales office in Eldersburg, Maryland and headquartered in Camarillo, California. [7]

Nallatech is a member of the OpenPOWER Foundation. [8]

Products

Nallatech was promoted for commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) FPGA technology applied in computing. [5] [7] According to David R. Martinez, Robert A. Bond, and M. Michael Vai, Nallatech systems are "based on a modular design concept in which the designer chooses the number of FPGAs, amount and type of memory, and other expansion cards to include in a system." [9]

Nallatech is also known for its motherboards with PCI cards which provide a "high throughput connection over which a host PC can provide and receive data and monitor system performance." [10] [11] [12]

On June 17, 2015, it released the 385A FPGA Accelerator Card, which includes the Altera Arria 10 / 1150 FPGA, PCI-Express form factor and works with most major servers, including IBM, HP and Dell.[ citation needed ]

In March 2011 the company announced a miniaturization service for their FPGAs. [13]

In 2012, Nallatech has partnered with Altera, and integrated their PCI Express card with Stratix V FPGAs. [14]

Xilinx's Xtreme DSP kit was developed with Nallatech, and like Xilinx, Nallatech uses "floating-point cores" in their FPGAs. [15] [16]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Field-programmable gate array</span> Array of logic gates that are reprogrammable

A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing – hence the term field-programmable. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware description language (HDL), similar to that used for an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). Circuit diagrams were previously used to specify the configuration, but this is increasingly rare due to the advent of electronic design automation tools.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Front-side bus</span> Type of computer communication interface

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Reconfigurable computing is a computer architecture combining some of the flexibility of software with the high performance of hardware by processing with very flexible high speed computing fabrics like field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The principal difference when compared to using ordinary microprocessors is the ability to make substantial changes to the datapath itself in addition to the control flow. On the other hand, the main difference from custom hardware, i.e. application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) is the possibility to adapt the hardware during runtime by "loading" a new circuit on the reconfigurable fabric.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Altera</span> U.S. information technology company

Altera Corporation was a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1983 and acquired by Intel in 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xilinx</span> American technology company

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References

  1. Baker, David (2004). Jane's Space Directory. Jane's Information Group. p. 278. ISBN   9780710626387.
  2. "Powerful Partners Helping Drive FPGA System Supplier Nallatech's Success" (PDF). Clabby Analytics. June 2007. Retrieved 2013-08-21.[ permanent dead link ]
  3. "Company Overview" (PDF). Interconnect Systems, Inc. February 2012. Retrieved 2013-08-21.
  4. "Molex buys ISI, gets Nallatech in the process" . Retrieved 2017-03-28.
  5. 1 2 Aerospace Engineering. Society of Automotive Engineers. 2006. p. 6.
  6. "Nallatech Helps Forge Alliance to Advance FPGA-Based High-Performance Computing". Press release. 25 May 2006. Archived from the original on 22 June 2015. Retrieved 23 August 2013.
  7. 1 2 Boogar, Steve. Directory of Electronics Technologies. BoogarLists. p. 64. GGKEY:6PUKR52C2TJ.
  8. "Current Members". OpenPOWER Foundation. Retrieved 2017-03-28.
  9. Martinez, David R.; Bond, Robert A.; Vai, M. Michael (20 June 2008). High Performance Embedded Computing Handbook: A Systems Perspective. Taylor & Francis. p. 250. ISBN   978-1-4200-0666-7.
  10. Cantoni, V. (2000). Proceedings: Computer Architectures for Machine Perception. IEEE Computer Society. Technical Committee on Computer Architecture, IEEE Computer Society Press,. p. 300. ISBN   9780769507408.
  11. Grayver, Eugene (20 July 2012). Implementing Software Defined Radio. Springer. p. 256. ISBN   978-1-4419-9332-8.
  12. Agha, Khaldoun Al; Omidyar, Cambyse Guy (1 January 2003). The Proceedings of the Fifth IFIP-TC6 International Conference on Mobile and Wireless Communications Networks: Singapore, 27-29 October 2003. World Scientific. p. 246. ISBN   978-981-279-114-6.
  13. Clive Maxfield (2011-03-15). "Nallatech offers FPGA miniaturization services for commercial and military applications". EE Times. Retrieved 2013-08-21.
  14. Loring Wirbel (April 6, 2012). "Two new Stratix milestones from NovaSparks and Nallatech". EDN Network. Retrieved 2013-08-21.
  15. Cheung, Peter Y. K.; Constantinides, George A.; Sousa, Josâe T. de (1 January 2003). Field-Programmable Logic and Applications: 13th International Conference, FPL 2003, Lisbon, Portugal, September 1-3, 2003, Proceedings. Springer. p. 980. ISBN   978-3-540-40822-2.
  16. Zhuo, Ling (2007). High-performance Linear Algebra on Reconfigurable Computing Systems. p. 16. ISBN   978-0-549-25111-8.