Intel Brings First Ever FPGA Integrated With HBM2 -- Stratix

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) recently unveiled the Intel Stratix 10MX FPGA, the industry’s first field programmable gate array (FPGA) integrated with High Bandwidth Memory DRAM (HBM2) for high performance computing (HPC) systems. This will provide users up to 10 times more memory bandwidth compared to stand alone DDR memory solutions.

The combination of HBM2 and FPGAs caters to high bandwidth memory interface required for next generation training in deep learning, HPC and routing applications. Intel Stratix 10 MX FPGA provides a memory bandwidth of 512 gigabytes per second for HPC systems and is based on 14-nm technology.

The company’s HBM2-based FPGAs are able to compress and accelerate larger data movements compared to stand alone FPGAs. Additionally, the integration of HPDA with FPGA will boost real-time data acceleration in streaming data pipeline frameworks like Apache (NYSE:APA) Kafka and Apache Spark.

The company expects the new chip to expand both the onboard memory pool and add more bandwidth, thereby increasing the interconnect performance between the CPU and the associated MIC (Many Integrated Cores). We believe that the launch will improve the scalability, reliability, power and density requirements of future HPC deployments.

According to ReynetteAu, vice president of marketing, Intel Programmable Solutions Group, “We designed the Intel Stratix 10 MX family to provide a new class of FPGA-based multi-function data accelerators for HPC and HPDA markets.”

To Conclude

We note that Intel has outperformed the industry over the last six months. While the company’s shares returned 32.7%, the industry gained 31.1%.

Intel is riding high on robust performance from the data-centric portion of its business. Data Center Group, Internet-of-Things Group, Non-Volatile Memory Solutions and Programmable Solutions Group form the crux of the company’s data-centric business model.

We believe that growing demand for server chips that are used in the data centers from the cloud-based service providers like Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is a key catalyst for Intel.

However, intense competition from Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) is a concern.

Zacks Rank & Other Stocks to Consider

Intel sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).

A few top-ranked stocks in the broader technology sector are Broadcom Limited (NASDAQ:AVGO) , NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC) . All the three stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Broadcom, NVIDIA and Western Digital have a long-term expected EPS growth rate of 13.7%, 10.25% and 31.12%, respectively.

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