Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium - March 30, 2017 -  Barco Silex, world-leading provider of security IP cores for FPGAs and ASICs, today announces a partnership with Accelize, the leading enabler of FPGA Acceleration-as-a-Service.  Barco Silex enters the QuickAlliance™ ecosystem, joining a growing number of world-class IP providers that offer their IP cores through Accelize’s platform for plug-and-play configuration of FPGA accelerators. In addition, Barco Silex and Accelize will partner to enable high-quality cloud-based encryption services leveraging Barco Silex’ acclaimed encryption cores.

Accelize brings a paradigm shift to the FPGA and Cloud industry with its QuickPlay® & QuickStore® products, and by nurturing an Ecosystem of IP providers and FPGA accelerator developers, who can sell their products through QuickStore in a pay per use manner (i.e. with no high upfront costs, unlike the traditional IP business model). FPGA accelerator developers use QuickPlay to create and customize such accelerators seamlessly and efficiently regardless of their FPGA expertise. For this, they combine highly optimized IP cores – from a growing catalog of FPGA IP cores provided by the QuickAlliance members – with their own custom functions written in C/C++. These accelerators can then be deployed on premise or as a service on Cloud Service Providers’ instances. The pool of available functionality will now also include IP cores from Barco Silex, beginning with encryption, but soon to include other security functions and video processing. Barco Silex thereby joins the growing number of providers of high-quality IP cores in the QuickAlliance Ecosystem. 

“The tidal wave of Acceleration of Cloud Services using FPGAs is coming upon the industry fast and Accelize is uniquely positioned to address it.” says Stephane Monboisset Director of Marketing and Business Development at Accelize. “Barco Silex is known worldwide for the quality of its security and video IP cores, and having Barco Silex join Accelize on this journey not only enables Accelize to address the growing demand for security solutions, but also plays as testimony to the quality of the ecosystem that we are building with the QuickAlliance.”

The partnership opens up great opportunities in the domain of FPGA Acceleration-as-a-Service (FAaaS), where Cloud Service Providers operate FPGA accelerators in the cloud to run compute-intensive tasks such as deep learning, big data analytics, database management, video processing and more. The OVH group, e.g., already offers FAaaS on its RunAbove servers, with FPGA accelerators that can be configured using the Accelize framework. Cloud users have the choice between a number of pre-built Accelerators, or they can build their own using QuickPlay and QuickStore. With the partnership between Barco Silex and Accelize, they can now also configure and set up Encryption-as-a-Service (EaaS). The encryption will be initially based upon the acclaimed AES GCM IP of Barco Silex, providing authenticated encryption at speeds of up to 100Gbps with very low latency. 

Thierry Watteyne, CEO of Barco Silex says that his company is really excited by the partnership with Accelize: “QuickPlay makes it easy for companies, even if they have little or no FPGA experience, to integrate our IP blocks into their FPGA designs, strongly extending the reach of our IP cores. But on top, this partnership brings us squarely into the promising world of cloud-based FPGA services, where our IP can be run and monetized as a service. This is a true paradigm shift in the IP business model and thus a significant opportunity for us.”

Accelize welcomes IP providers to join the QuickAlliance ecosystem, to provide the most comprehensive high quality IP offering, and take part into the revolution that Cloud computing represents for the FPGA industry. 

About Barco Silex

Barco Silex (Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium) is a world leader in security IP cores and platforms, encryption and video processing, as well as in electronic design services (ASIC, FPGA, DSP, Board). Thanks to its continued stream of innovations, Barco Silex provides state-of-the-art security solutions, with security platforms and encryption cores that deliver unrivaled speed and performance in a very compact footprint. Barco Silex is a subsidiary of Barco (NYSE Euronext Brussels: BAR), the global leader in networked visualization products for the entertainment, enterprise and healthcare markets. For more information about Barco Silex:  www.barco-silex.com

About Accelize

Spinoff of 20-year-old PLDA Group, Accelize aims to accelerate the adoption of FPGA-based reconfigurable hardware in IT infrastructures by streamlining the development and sale of FPGA accelerators with a unique, intuitive FPGA development flow and a business model that aligns with Could / data center needs. Its primary offerings, QuickPlay and QuickStore, are the result of years of research in the field of High-Level Design (HLD) and High-Level Synthesis (HLS) combined with the strong expertise in FPGA hardware and IP design. For more information, see  www.accelize.com.