Unlike conventional computing, where applications must be crafted and parallelized to match the fixed architecture of the computing machine, with reconfigurable computing (RC) the processing architectures can adapt to match the unique needs of each application and in so doing often achieve much higher performance with lower energy consumption. At the pinnacle of the RC field is Novo-G, the world’s most powerful reconfigurable supercomputer, capable of speeds rivaling the largest conventional supercomputers, with key applications in health and life sciences, signal and image processing, finance, cryptology, and more. Novo-G features an innovative architecture with nearly 300 (soon nearly 400) reconfigurable-logic processors (FPGAs), each with up to 8.5GB of directly attached SDRAM, supported by multicore CPU and GPU processors for pre- and post-processing, 20Gb/s InfiniBand and 1Gb/s Ethernet networks for intra-system communications, 10Gb/s Ethernet for long-haul communications over National Lambda Rail, and a potent set of vendor and research design tools, all housed in four standard 19” server racks.
For example, in health and life sciences, data-set sizes and processing demands for computational genomics and proteomics are vast and rapidly growing, and Novo-G is proving to be an ideal machine in solving such problems faster than any computer in history. In November 2010, Novo-G was selected for the HPCwire Readers Choice Award entitled "Best Use of HPC in Life Sciences" for our "Smith-Waterman Implementation on Novo-G Supercomputer,” a gold-standard application in genomics sequence alignment. HPCwire is a premier source of information in the field of HPC, with readership in the hundreds of thousands of HPC practitioners worldwide.