AMD unveils Versal Premium Series Gen 2 for data center workloads

Advanced Micro Devices announced its Versal Premium Series Gen 2 chip platform for data center customers doing AI processing and other work.

The AMD Versal is an adaptive FPGA, or field programmable gate array, platform for system-on-chip customers. It delivers accelerated performance for a wide range of workloads in data centers, communications, test and measurement, and aerospace and defense markets.

AMD said the Versal Premium Series Gen 2 will be the FPGA industry’s first devices featuring Compute Express Link 3.1 and PCIe Gen6 as well as LPDDR5X memory support in hard intellectual property.

These next-generation interface and memory technologies access and move data rapidly and efficiently between processors and accelerators for tasks such as AI processing. CXL 3.1 and LPDDR5X help unlock more memory resources faster to address the growing real-time processing and storage demands of data-intensive applications across markets.

“System architects are constantly looking to pack more data into smaller spaces and move data more efficiently between parts of the system,” said Salil Raje, SVP of adaptive and embedded computing group at AMD, in a statement. “Our latest addition to the Versal Gen 2 portfolio helps customers improve overall system throughput and utilization of memory resources to achieve the highest performance for their most demanding applications from the cloud to the edge.”

Using the open-standard interconnect, AMD said the new processors enable high-bandwidth host CPU-to-accelerator connectivity. PCIe Gen6 offers a two times to four times faster line rate compared to competing FPGAs with PCIe Gen4 or Gen5 support, AMD said. CXL 3.1 also offers similar benefits as well as enhanced fabric and coherency.