{"id":4181,"date":"2015-11-12T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/msr_er\/2015\/11\/12\/project-catapult-servers-available-to-academic-researchers\/"},"modified":"2016-08-17T16:51:26","modified_gmt":"2016-08-17T23:51:26","slug":"project-catapult-servers-available-to-academic-researchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/blog\/project-catapult-servers-available-to-academic-researchers\/","title":{"rendered":"Project Catapult servers available to academic researchers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Derek Chiou, Partner Architect, Microsoft<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: medium;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\" aligncenter\" style=\"margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto;\" title=\"In collaboration with the University of Texas and Altera, Project Catapult servers are open to academic researchers\" src=\"https:\/\/msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net\/media\/MSDNBlogsFS\/prod.evol.blogs.msdn.com\/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles\/00\/00\/01\/32\/81\/5265.b-ProjectCatapult_MRCBlogImage_496x340.jpg\" alt=\"In collaboration with the University of Texas and Altera, Project Catapult servers are open to academic researchers\" \/><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: medium;\">At this year\u2019s <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"http:\/\/sc15.supercomputing.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Supercomputing 2015<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> Conference in Austin, Texas, Microsoft is announcing the availability of Project Catapult clusters to academic researchers through the <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tacc.utexas.edu\/firefly\/\" target=\"_blank\">Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> at The University of Texas at Austin. Project Catapult, a Microsoft research venture, offers a groundbreaking way to vastly improve the performance and energy efficiency of datacenter workloads.<\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 258px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Catapult board with Altera FPGA\" src=\"https:\/\/msdnshared.blob.core.windows.net\/media\/MSDNBlogsFS\/prod.evol.blogs.msdn.com\/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles\/00\/00\/01\/32\/81\/0361.Altera_chip.png\" alt=\"Catapult board with Altera FPGA\" width=\"248\" height=\"173\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Catapult board with Altera FPGA<\/p><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: medium;\">Project Catapult uses standard Microsoft datacenter servers\u2014each augmented with field-programmable gate array (FPGA). While standard chips have their gates permanently etched onto the silicon, FPGA gates are implemented in such a way that their functionality can be changed on the fly.\u00a0Therefore, FPGAs provide programmable logic that can be tailored to individual applications.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: medium;\"> Using FPGAs in the datacenter can dramatically accelerate performance and reduce power consumption, while holding the line on cost. For example, in work described in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/a-reconfigurable-fabric-for-accelerating-large-scale-datacenter-services\/\" target=\"_blank\">ISCA 2014 paper<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, Catapult doubled the throughput of Bing\u2019s search-result ranking with a less than 30 percent increase in cost\u2014thus delivering substantial savings. Project Catapult ushers in a new datacenter architecture that marries programmable software with efficient and low-power programmable hardware at scale. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana, geneva; font-size: medium;\">In the video below, Microsoft Researcher Doug Burger discusses the technology and potential of Catapult.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ushering in the Era of Programmable Hardware\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/76f1QU0MOO8?feature=oembed&rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva; font-size: medium;\">Project Catapult uses Altera FPGAs, many of which have been donated by Altera to the academic program. Mario Maccariello, business development manager in Altera\u2019s computer and storage unit, echoes our excitement about the project. \u201cThe FPGA-based servers will demonstrate to students, scientists, and the industry in general how datacenters can provide increased performance, while being greener and reducing power consumption compared with traditional architectures.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva; font-size: medium;\">TACC will be giving tours of their massive facility during Supercomputing 2015, allowing attendees to view the Project Catapult servers on site. In addition, we will demo Project Catapult in the Microsoft booth throughout the week, so stop by to see how this reconfigurable fabric can bring improved performance and efficiency to the datacenter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva; font-size: medium;\"><strong>Learn more<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/project-catapult\/\" target=\"_blank\">Request access to Project Catapult <span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva;\"><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"http:\/\/sc15.supercomputing.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Supercomputing 2015<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva;\"><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.technet.com\/b\/inside_microsoft_research\/archive\/2014\/06\/16\/catapult-moving-beyond-cpus-in-the-cloud.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Catapult: Moving beyond CPUs in the cloud<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva;\"><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.technet.com\/b\/inside_microsoft_research\/archive\/2015\/02\/23\/machine-learning-gets-big-boost-from-ultra-efficient-convolutional-neural-network-accelerator.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Machine learning gets a big boost from ultra-efficient convolutional neural network accelerator<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva;\"><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tacc.utexas.edu\/-\/tacc-to-launch-new-catapult-system-to-researchers-worldwide\" target=\"_blank\">TACC press release<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: verdana,geneva;\"><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"http:\/\/newsroom.altera.com\/press-releases\/corporate-releases\/\" target=\"_blank\">Altera press release<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Derek Chiou, Partner Architect, Microsoft At this year\u2019s Supercomputing 2015 Conference in Austin, Texas, Microsoft is announcing the availability of Project Catapult clusters to academic researchers through the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin. Project Catapult, a Microsoft research venture, offers a groundbreaking way to vastly improve the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32627,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194470,194463],"tags":[194623,195284,195285,195319,186879,195583,196904,197344],"research-area":[13547],"msr-region":[],"msr-event-type":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-promo-type":[],"msr-podcast-series":[],"class_list":["post-4181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-architecture","category-systems","tag-altera-fpgas","tag-datacenter-performance","tag-datacenter-servers","tag-derek-chiou","tag-energy-efficiency","tag-field-programmable-gate-array","tag-project-catapult","tag-supercomputing-2015","msr-research-area-systems-and-networking","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_event_details":{"start":"","end":"","location":""},"podcast_url":"","podcast_episode":"","msr_research_lab":[],"msr_impact_theme":[],"related-publications":[],"related-downloads":[],"related-videos":[],"related-academic-programs":[],"related-groups":[],"related-projects":[171431],"related-events":[],"related-researchers":[],"msr_type":"Post","byline":"","formattedDate":"November 12, 2015","formattedExcerpt":"By Derek Chiou, Partner Architect, Microsoft At this year\u2019s Supercomputing 2015 Conference in Austin, Texas, Microsoft is announcing the availability of Project Catapult clusters to academic researchers through the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin. Project Catapult, a Microsoft&hellip;","locale":{"slug":"en_us","name":"English","native":"","english":"English"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4181"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4181"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237875,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4181\/revisions\/237875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4181"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=4181"},{"taxonomy":"msr-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-region?post=4181"},{"taxonomy":"msr-event-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-event-type?post=4181"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=4181"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=4181"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=4181"},{"taxonomy":"msr-promo-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-promo-type?post=4181"},{"taxonomy":"msr-podcast-series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-podcast-series?post=4181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}