LDA Unity

With up to 6 boards per 1U, the LDA Unity platform is designed to maximize FPGA density while providing clock synchronization, extensive interconnect options between individual FPGA boards, and a powerful AMD EPYC™ CPU.

Currently, many server manufacturers are working to fit as many FPGA boards as possible into a 1U chassis to address the growing demand. The best such specially designed servers can fit up to four (4) FPGA boards. However, a lot of times, these boards face the back of the server, making cabling and management more complicated. Also, their interconnect is done via PCIe involving the machine's CPU or through a custom connectivity implementation that occupies valuable QSFP/SFP ports.

The record-breaking LDA Unity platform can host up to six (6) PCIe-compliant FPGA boards in 1U, all of them facing the device's front panel. With unique features and easy uniform management, the LDA Unity platform provides the shortest path to exchange for all the boards and is highly appreciated by FPGA application designers.

Highlights

• Up to 6 single-slot PCIe-compliant FPGA boards in 1U
  • Supported models include: Xilinx Alveo U55C and U50, LDA Panther Series boards (Xilinx Ultrascale+), and the LDA Orion Series boards (Xilinx Versal Premium).
  • 3.4 Gbytes of ultra-low latency SyncBurst™ SRAM with six LDA SBM09P-3 (Panther) boards configuration. This memory is enough to handle all US stock exchanges or the most active options' feeds in 1U with the lowest possible latency
• All FPGA boards can be synchronized to a single clock source
  • Great for distributed system applications such as consolidated book building, load balancing or multiple strategies running on the same feed data
  • Each FPGA acts with predictable timing and no jitter
• Unique interconnect options inside the chassis
  • Layer 1 interconnect via LDA D6 Mark II PCIe switching board. <2 ns uniform distribution latency to all FPGAs. More
  • 100G direct interconnect between FPGA boards using special cabling. Very low LUT utilization by using 100G Hard IP on Xilinx FPGAs
• Ability to run without motherboard
  • Ideal when remote FPGA management is used

Unity L1 Configuration

One question that always arises regarding multi-board setup: how to deliver the actual incoming data to all FPGA boards simultaneously? Crucial if FPGAs are supposed to handle the same data, for example, in load-balanced schemas or running different strategies on the same feeds.

The LDA Unity platform easily solves this problem by installing one D6 Mark II PCIe form factor full mesh Layer 1 switch-on-card in place of one FPGA board.

With this option, each Unity chassis gets its own full mesh Layer 1 network with uniform latency to all nodes, so all external data can be delivered in under 2 ns to each FPGA board. FPGA boards can then send data to the exchange independently or use Layer 1 again: full flexibility is provided.