Since the establishment of the Intel Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) China Innovation Center in Chongqing last December, Intel Corp has launched a professional FPGA personnel training system, a series of industrial summits and innovative competitions to build an influential FPGA industrial cluster in Chongqing.

The center is located in Chongqing Xiyong Micro-Electronics Industrial Park and receives daily visits from government, company and university representatives. It showcases over 100 applications of FPGA technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), self-driving and 5G communications.

The Intel FPGA China Innovation Center is located in Chongqing. [Photo/cqnews.net]

As a special technology within the integrated circuit industry, FPGA is programmable and can be configured repeatedly, which means FPGA chips can be re-adjusted as needed after being manufactured.

In addition, FPGA's high level of performance and low level of power consumption show great potential in AI, 5G, automatic driving, cloud computing and intelligent terminals.

However, the high technical requirements of FPGA make the talent pool very limited in China. Intel hopes to make use of talents from the neighboring university town and become a talent-training platform.

An employee at Intel demonstrates the application of FPGA technology. [Photo/liangjiang.gov.cn]

The center will promote cooperation between universities and enterprises by establishing a two-way communication system between university teachers and industrial talents, encouraging universities to add courses and research institutions on FPGA, offering online courses, building FPGA promotional platforms, etc.

A cloud acceleration platform will also be launched this March, which will theoretically be able to serve 100 companies from all over the country simultaneously.

According to data, the global revenue of FPGA chips is estimated to reach $27.5 billion, with extended revenue exceeding $100 billion. The establishment of the Intel FPGA China Innovation Center will help Chongqing become a national FPGA hub.