Kalray

Kalray is a fabless semiconductor company specialized in the application of MPPA manycore technology to high-performance processing. It targets two main markets: networking and storage infrastructure in data centers; and high-performance embedded computing for critical applications.

Kalray
TypeSociété Anonyme
IndustrySemiconductors
Founded27 August 2008 (2008-08-27)[1]
Headquarters
Montbonnot
,
Rhône-Alpes, France
ProductsMany-core processor Complete solutions (electronic boards and software)
Websitewww.kalrayinc.com

Kalray was created in 2008 as a spin-off from the CEA. It is headquartered in Grenoble (France), has about 70 employees (50 of which in engineering and R&D) and has 3 other office locations: Sophia Antipolis (France), Los Altos, California (USA) and Tokyo (Japan). Its customers are system integrators and equipment manufacturers for data centers, automotive, defense and aerospace.

Product

MPPA manycore processors

MPPA® manycore processors are composed of clusters of 16 VLIW cores each. A high-speed network on chip is used to interconnect clusters. The MPPA core implements a 5-issue VLIW architecture that provides strong timing predictability properties while delivering scalar performances competitive with high-end superscalar application processors.

MPPA processors can be programmed using a Software Development Kit[2] that encompasses the GNU toolchain, supporting standard programming environment for C and C++ with OpenMP, OpenCL.[3]

Neural network inference applications are supported by a fully automatic code generator called KaNN that takes trained neural networks described in Caffe or TensorFlow and produces optimized C code for low-latency inference.

MPPA-256 Andey

Produced in 2013 in CMOS 28HP technology from TSMC, this processor running at 400 MHz has been designed as a target for a cyclostatic dataflow language called Sigma-C.

MPPA2-256 Bostan

Produced in 2015 with the same CMOS 28HP technology from TSMC, this processor running at 550 MHz was enhanced to increase the floating-point performance of the VLIW cores, to natively support the Linux operating system, and to process high-speed Ethernet (up to 80Gbit/s). Each VLIW core was extended with a tightly coupled cryptographic coprocessor for security protocol acceleration.

MPPA2.2-256 Bostan2

Produced in 2017, this processor is based on the previous generation, Bostan, with an improved DDR controller, Ethernet controller and PCIe controller. As a result, this processor fully supports the NVM Express® (NVMe™) standard interface (for connecting hosts to PCIe bus-attached SSDs), and also the NVMe over Fabrics standard using RDMA (for connections between servers, storage controllers, and NVMe enclosures).

MPPA3 Coolidge

The 3rd-generation MPPA processor Coolidge has been released.[4] Based on TSMC 16nm FinFET process technology, this processor includes 80 64-bit VLIW processing cores distributed among 5 clusters, 8x 25Gbit/s Ethernet and 16x PCIe Gen4 interfaces. Each VLIW core is extended with a tightly coupled tensor co-processor for deep learning application acceleration.

Product history

The first Kalray patent was filed in 2010. Today the company holds 23 patent families, including 2 families with an exclusive CEA license.

On 22 June 2015, Kalray began the distribution of data center acceleration board families: TurboCard and KONIC,[5] for networking and storage applications, both of which can be programmed with either standard C or C++.[6] TurboCard and KONIC both utilize the MPPA2-256 Bostan 2nd generation processor.

In 2018, the Kalray solutions were certified by the NVM Express organization[7] through the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL),[8] an independent testing provider of standard conformance solutions and multi-vendor interoperability. This certification was the first of its kind for a fully integrated system.[9]

Listing on Euronext

In 2017, ahead of the launch of Kalray's third-generation microprocessor, Safran[10] and Pengpai joined the company's historical investors (mainly CEA Investissement, ACE, INOCAP).[11] In 2018, Alliance Ventures (strategic venture capital fund operated by Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi) and Definvest (an investment fund managed by Bpifrance on behalf of the French Ministry of Armed Forces) also acquired stakes in Kalray.[12]

On June 12, 2018, Kalray launched its IPO on the Euronext Paris Stock Market[13] and raised €47.7M (after exercise of the over-allocation option), "the most significant IPO since Euronext Growth was created in Paris".[14]

References
  1. "Kalray entering the register of commerce". Retrieved 2018-05-26.
  2. "Kalray's software Development Kits".
  3. "About us - Kalray". Kalray. Retrieved 2017-05-04.
  4. "Kalray unveils Coolidge at CES 2020". Kalray. 2020-01-06. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  5. "Boards - Kalray". Kalray. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  6. Kalray. "Kalray to Demonstrate 3+ Million IOPS with an NVMe-oF JBOF System". www.prnewswire.com. Retrieved 2017-05-04.
  7. "Home". NVM Express. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  8. "UNH InterOperability Laboratory". UNH InterOperability Laboratory. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  9. "Kalray first to receive NVMe-oF Certification for a fully integrated system - Kalray". Kalray. 2018-05-22. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  10. "Safran acquires stake in Kalray, European leader in new-generation processors for critical onboard systems". Safran. 2017-06-21. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  11. "Kalray raises $26 million, anticipating the launch of its third generation of microprocessor - Kalray". Kalray. 2018-06-18. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  12. "Alliance Ventures and Definvest acquire stakes in Kalray - Kalray". Kalray. 2018-05-02. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  13. "Euronext Growth market announces listing of Kalray". LeapRate. 2018-06-13. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
  14. "Kalray has raised €43.5M: the most significant IPO since Euronext Growth was created in Paris - Kalray". Kalray. 2018-06-07. Retrieved 2018-06-28.
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