Comment Re:1000 cores? (Score 1) 91
Actually, if you check out the BEE2 website (http://bee2.eecs.berkeley.edu/, BEE2 being the precursor to BEE3) you'll notice a Casper (http://casper.berkeley.edu/) logo in the upper left. That is the SETI folks!
Except that instead of running SETI@home, they used heavily FPGA optimized designs. Since most radio astronomy only requires a few bits of precision (2-8) modern CPUs or GPUs are incredibly wasteful for them. So intead they use heavily optimized fixed-point math circuitry. By using FPGAs they can keep them easily reconfigurable and get enough throughput to deal with e.g. Hat Creek (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hat_Creek_Radio_Observatory).
Except that instead of running SETI@home, they used heavily FPGA optimized designs. Since most radio astronomy only requires a few bits of precision (2-8) modern CPUs or GPUs are incredibly wasteful for them. So intead they use heavily optimized fixed-point math circuitry. By using FPGAs they can keep them easily reconfigurable and get enough throughput to deal with e.g. Hat Creek (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hat_Creek_Radio_Observatory).
