Intel FPGA PAC D5005 - Best Replacement Option

[craig-dillabaugh]

Hello,

I am brand new to the FPGA world, so please forgive any naive questions. 

We were looking at acquiring an Intel FPGA PAC D5005 card, which has been discontinued.  What would be the recommended replacement for this card?  In particular we are hoping for something with which we can evaluate the following software:

https://github.com/intel/hexl-fpga

Secondly, recently Intel announced the development of a ASIC accelerator for homomorphic encryption (see final point under "News Highlights") here:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/2023-intel-innovation-day-2-all-news.html#gs.72x4if

Is any information available on when this accelerator will be available either in Beta of for general availability?

Regards,

Craig

[khtan]

Hi Craig,

Thanks for reaching out to Intel. I'm Kian and I'm assigned to look into this case.

I'm checking with Yan Meng (the author for the github project) whether other cards is supported in the project. I saw the release notes mentioned about Agilex FPGAs but the readme still mentioned using D5005 . I'm also checking with our development team to ask about the ASIC mentioned in the link you provided.

https://github.com/intel/hexl-fpga/releases/tag/v2.0

Thanks

Regards

Kian

[craig-dillabaugh]

Thank you.

[khtan]

Hi Craig,

Sorry for the wait. I manage to talk to Yan Meng and he mentioned the library has been validated on a system hosting an Intel® PAC D5005 (Intel® Stratix® 10 GX 2800), and Terasic DE-10 Agilex (Intel® Agilex™ F014) PCIe cards. HEXL-FPGA library is no longer being worked on thus only those 2 cards are validated. 

Since D5005 is discontinued (though I think there are some stock left in the market) , other option is the Terasic DE10 Agilex

https://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=142&No=1252

As for your question ASIC accelerator for homomorphic encryption availability , so far I did not manage to get any information on it. I will try to ask around further on this.

Do you mind me asking whether you're evaluating this from company standpoint(&name of company) or from learning/university research? Had some folks from our business unit asking whether is this request is coming from customer requiring HE support on FPGA cards

Thanks

Regards

Kian

[craig-dillabaugh]

Thanks.

Please do let me know what you're able to find out. 

In answer to your question, this is for my company - Solana Networks Inc  (https://www.solananetworks.com/) . We're a Canadian company working on an industrial application using Homomorphic Encryption.

I'm happy to chat with anyone from your business unit. Let me know the contact name and email/phone and I'm happy to reach out.

Cheers,

Craig

[khtan]

Hi Craig,

Probably this link might help you in the HE library part 

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/technical/homomorphic-encryption/accelerating-homomorphic-encryption-for-fpga.html

Thanks

Regards

Kian

[khtan]

Hi Craig,

Thanks for the information and sorry for the delay, I didn't get any feedback from the FPGA team on the ASIC development thus I'm contacting a separate team that is working on FHE to ask around.

Have you tried your local Intel sales representative? They might have details on the product roadmap.

Thanks

Regards

Kian

[craig-dillabaugh]

Thanks Kian, appreciate the efforts.

I would happily contact sales if I could find such a person, but any effort to find contact information for someone at Intel inevitably ends up back on these forums

Cheers,

Craig

[khtan]

Hi Craig,

Sorry for the long delay, I've been trying to find the appropriate people to get the sales contact for your region but unfortunately no one is replying back to me. I will try contact the admin for webpage to ask whether they know the contact person, will also pass along your comment about finding contact information for Intel is difficult (either forums or fill in a form to submit). 

Anyway I've also talked to the business manager for FHE development and he mentioned he is very keen to talk to you about FHE but before that could happen, he mentioned about the requirement to have NDA with Intel as there is some confidentiality information involved thus I'm trying to find the sales contact first .

Thanks

Regards

Kian

[craig-dillabaugh]

Thanks again Kian.  We would certainly be happy to talk to anyone in the FHE group, and while I can't personally make the call on NDAs I am sure my management would be happy to work something out.

Cheers,

Craig

[khtan]

Hi Craig,

Just an update, I've passed your name and email to our Intel/Altera counterpart to contact you directly on the FHE.

Thanks

Regards

Kian

[khtan]

Hi Craig, 

Just to follow up, did anyone from Intel/Altera contacted you via email?

Thanks

Regards

Kian

[craig-dillabaugh]

We have not yet heard from anyone.

Craig

[khtan]

Hi Craig,

Sorry for that, let me follow up with them.

Thanks

Regards

Kian

[khtan]

Hi Craig,

I've dropped you an email for the sales contact representative for Western Canada region. 

Please do drop him an email and he will arrange a meeting to talk to you directly.

If there is no further question on this case, I would like to set this forum case to close pending and transition it to community support.

Thanks

Regards

Kian

[craig-dillabaugh]

HI Kian,

I think closing this case would be fine. 

Having said that, I have not yet received anything by email from you (my address is cdillabaugh@solananetworks.com) if you don't already have it.

Thank you for all your support on this issue.

Cheers,

Craig

[khtan]

Hi Craig, 

Sorry, I didn't realize the system in forum did not send out the email even though it was listed as email sent to your email address.  System is having issues past few days, can't even reply to forum threads directly. Anyway I've send you another email directly. 

Thanks

Regards

Kian

[khtan]

Hi Craig,

I will set this thread to close pending. Please login to ‘https://supporttickets.intel.com’, view details of the desire request, and post a feed/response within the next 15 days to allow me to continue to support you. After 15 days, this thread will be transitioned to community support. The community users will be able to help you on your follow-up questions.

If you happened to close this thread you might receive a survey. If you think you would rank your support experience less than 4 out of 10, please allow me to correct it before closing or if the problem can’t be corrected, please let me know the cause so that I may improve your future service experience.

Regards

Kian