
Simulating RISC-V Clusters with FPGAs on AWS - fabuzaid
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/bringing-datacenter-scale-hardware-software-co-design-to-the-cloud-with-firesim-and-amazon-ec2-f1-instances/
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meta-tron
I think it proves AWS will be an alternative and potentially great choice for
fabless chip company/startup.

They all need emulation to validate their chip design. However emulator is
very very expensive, and unlikely in full use.

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brian-armstrong
Deving on AWS? That seems awfully frustrating and expensive. Now every time I
click compile I can remember how much this is going to cost me.

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akshayn
You should compare this to the cost of buying an FPGA. It can be cost-
effective.

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taylorphebus
[https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/xilinx-
inc/XCVU9P-...](https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/xilinx-
inc/XCVU9P-L2FLGA2577E/XCVU9P-L2FLGA2577E-ND/7604578)

The list price of a Vu9P is like $50,000. I'm sure that's not the real price,
but still.

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gravypod
[https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/microsemi-
corporat...](https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/microsemi-
corporation/M2S090TS-EVAL-KIT/1100-1228-ND/5148974)

This is about half as powerful but comes preassembled and ready to go. Also
"only" $500

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mng2
The 'VU9P has ~2.5M logic elements and 6840 DSP units. The M2S090 has ~90K
logic elements and 84 math blocks. It's nowhere near the same class of device.

The AWS FPGA offering only makes sense if you absolutely need a massive FPGA
connected to massive amounts of RAM, and don't want to spend the bucks to own
it yourself.

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borramakot
To try this, do I need the full 16XL F1 instance, or can I run 1 node on the
2XL (1 FPGA) instance?

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sagark
You can run a single node on an f1.2xlarge instance.

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monocasa
How much is an f1.2xlarge instance? My google fu seems to be failing me.

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taylorphebus
[https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-
demand/](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/) $1.65/hour in N.
Virginia

Way less with spot prices, but for something like this, you probably want on-
demand.

