Use a Single OpenCL Source Code to Compare FPGA and NVIDIA K1 Power and Performance

For many embedded applications power consumption is king. System On a Chip (SOC) designs such as the ARM-based Altera Cyclone V development board provides a Linux-based environment to program and run parallel applications on an FPGA using OpenCL much like the well-known NVIDIA Jetson development board. What a wonderful opportunity to compare the performance and power consumption of both hardware platforms using a single OpenCL source code!

The Altera Cyclone V Linux is based on Yocto Project, an open source collaboration project that provides templates, tools and methods to help you create custom Linux-based systems for embedded products independent of the hardware architecture.

You can purchase  the Cyclone V GX Starter Kit for  $179. Altera also offers a software simulation system where your can evaluate your software using a simulator, “Jump-Start Software Development with the SoC FPGA Virtual Target“. Evaluation licenses are available.

Online training is also available: http://www.altera.com/devices/processor/training/emb-training.html.