back to article Codename Brainwave: Microsoft reveals tricks and tips for whipping cloud FPGAs into shape

Microsoft today teased chip designers with Brainwave, its cloud-hosted pool of FPGAs designed to perform AI stuff in real time. The Windows giant has previously spoken of bunging FPGAs in its Azure cloud. It's been using the programmable logic gate arrays in its data centers for a few years now. The chips are typically used …

  1. Duncan Macdonald

    Skynet anyone ?

    How long before the Internet wakes up?

  2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    so very hand for implementing deep packet inspection without a performance hit.

    Let's see if anyone else finds it's as useful as claimed.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Ker-ching!

    Bitcoin mining algorithm in FPGA cloud-array anyone?

  4. Just Enough

    More FLAs please

    Would it have hurt to mention anywhere what FPGA stood for? Even in passing? Or is it if you don't know you shouldn't be reading this?

    1. Fitz_

      Re: More FLAs please

      For the benefit of anyone wondering, it stands for Field Programmable Gate Array and they are basically fancy chips that can reprogram themselves on the fly.

      They are used in high end networking kit, and if memory serves, someone quite a few years ago hooked up a proto-machine learning algo to some with the goal of transmitting a message between two points. They returned to find the message being sent and received, but could not work out how it was occuring until they realised the FPGAs had reconfigured themselves in a primitive radio.

  5. Stevie

    Bah!

    Ah, yet another implied redefinition of "AI".

    Still no HAL though.

    1. Draco

      Re: Bah!

      HAL is a software layer sitting above the FPGA.

      And, yes, I am deliberately "missing" the intent of your comment.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Holmes

    Takes me back...

    Circa 1985 I used a FPGA to implement a bubble-sort algorithm in my final year at Uni. It ran quick too...

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