Server delivers 100:1 performance improvements over existing microprocessor designs

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — May 28, 2015 — SRC Computers today announced the commercial availability of the Saturn 1 Server, a dynamically reconfigurable server for hyperscale data centers and Web operations. The server provides compute performance typically 100 times faster than that of traditional microprocessor designs and is available through resellers and directly from SRC Computers.

SRC Computers has delivered reconfigurable servers to government agencies since 1999 and is the recognized leader in general-purpose reconfigurable computing. SRC systems allow C programmers to achieve orders of magnitude increases in performance and reductions in power consumption in a smaller footprint than systems that rely on conventional microprocessors alone.

“Existing microprocessor architectures cannot keep up with the demands of hyperscale and cloud computing,” said Jon Huppenthal, SRC Computers President and CEO. “Software developers use every trick in the book to squeeze performance out of hyperscale applications but they cannot overcome the limitations of multi-purpose processor designs. The Saturn 1 Server changes the limits of traditional microprocessor architecture and lets programmers use the code they already have on a radically different architecture.”

The Saturn 1 Server achieves dramatic performance and efficiency improvements by eliminating the unnecessary baggage of traditional microprocessor designs. Latency is minimized because the Saturn 1 Server is an autonomous server and not a PCI accelerator card. The SRC compiler, Carte, converts the developer’s code to a silicon design that can be changed on a subroutine by subroutine basis.

“Our first reaction was pure astonishment when we saw our transaction stream processing performance measured in nanoseconds,” said Todd Rooke, Co-Founder, Jingit. “Jingit achieved more than 500 times performance increase with the new SRC FPGA architecture.”

Unlike traditional Field Programmable Gate Array designs, the Saturn 1 Server lets programmers use the languages and tooling they already know. C and other popular coding languages can be used for programming on a Saturn 1 Server. Hyperscale web services companies have ported their applications to Saturn 1 Servers in three days.

“Traditional general purpose microprocessor-based servers have hit the limit for hyperscale applications,” said Dan Olds, CEO and founder, Gabriel Consulting. “The mega data centers absolutely need higher performance, lower cost alternatives in order to handle ever increasing demand.”

The Saturn 1 Server benefits typical applications and mega data centers across five vectors: