Xilinx and Hackster.io launch inaugural Adaptive Computing Challenge

Xilinx has announced the first Xilinx Adaptive Computing Challenge and is calling on independent developers and start-ups to develop a creative design solution to accelerate workloads using the Vitis Unified Software Platform and Vitis AI.

The Xilinx Adaptive Computing Challenge is offering two different contests for developers and start-ups to solve real-world problems in a new and innovative way.

Xilinx is giving away prizes to the top 9 projects in the developer contest; first, second and third place for each category, with prizes up to $54,000. The start-up contest will have a total of three winners, first, second, and third with a total cash prize pool of more than $150,000.

Contest registration is now open.

Developers

Xilinx has teamed up with Hackster.io, the world’s fastest-growing developer community for learning, programming, and building hardware, to run the developer design challenge with three distinct platforms and application categories. Using the Vitis/ Vitis AI, developers can create exciting new applications on select platforms:

Three Platforms:

• Intelligent Video Analytics (Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC ZCU104 Evaluation Kit) Develop solutions including, but not limited to: smart city, smart retail, ADAS, robotics vision, medical imaging, and other video analytics applications.
• Adaptable Compute Acceleration (Alveo U50 Accelerator Card) Implement hardware acceleration for challenging, compute-intensive workloads, including, but not limited to: FinTech, machine learning, computational storage, and data search and analytics.
• Adaptive Intelligence of Things (Avnet Ultra96-V2 Development Board) Build any application that shows how you’d leverage the power of adaptive computing in the age of IoT 2.0. We are looking for the best use of hardware acceleration with programmable logic.

Startups

For the start-up track, participants are asked to focus on solving real-world problems with technology innovations on any hardware, including custom platforms that run on Xilinx silicon. In this challenge, start-ups should demonstrate a significant performance boost or TCO advantage vs CPU / GPU / ASIC. Using the Vitis development environment for system-level integration and acceleration is required.

Participants can register for the developer contest up until closing submissions on November 15, 2020, although if they wish to apply for free or loaner hardware, hardware applications close on August 14, 2020.

The winners will be announced on December 15, 2020. For the start-up track, participant registration closes August 14, 2020, and submissions for start-ups close on January 1, 2021, with winners announced February 15, 2021.