The BEE3 (Berkeley Emulation Engine, version 3) is a multi-FPGA system with up to 64 GB of DRAM and several I/O subsystems that can be used to enable faster, larger and higher fidelity computer architecture or other systems research.

Objective: Revitalizing Computer Architecture Research

The Problem

• Computer Architecture is increasingly incremental, and boring.
• Many papers study a tiny feature, and report 5% improvements.
• Simulation is too slow to allow full-system experiments running real software.
• Researchers can no longer build real chips to test new ideas – it’s too expensive.

Our Goal: Change this

• Provide an experimental platform for the research community.

The Solution: BEE3

BEE3 stands for the Berkeley Emulation Engine version 3. The BEE3 system is a 2U chassis with a tightly-couple 4 FPGA system that is a vehicle for Computer Architecture Research. In particular, the BEE3 is the target platform for the Research Accelerator for Multiple Processors (RAMP). RAMP is a collection of six universities (Berkeley, Stanford, UW, UT, CMU, and MIT) and several industry partners including: Microsoft Research, Xilinx, Sun Microsystems and IBM. The BEE3 is a scalable platform, 1 to 64 2U systems, that facilitates research in a multiple areas: Computer Architecture, Systems, OS and Software, Memory Hierarchy and Storage, and various Application/Algorithm Accelerators, to name a few.