FPGAs as Hardware Accelerators in Data Centers: A Survey From the Data Centric Perspective

The streaming characteristics of the data, which are observed to be highly dynamic, induce more research challenges. The resource consumption in terms of computation complexity, storage, energy and security of data centers are under intense research focus. This article intends to review the methods to enhance the operational efficiency of data centers by the deployment of field programmable gate arrays (FPGA Device). Since high-performance computation in data centers is in huge demand, this article addresses the issues in handling the data despite challenges persisting in the conventional schemes. The key enabling technologies such as big data and cloud computing that support the positive outgrowth of FPGAs in data centers are also reviewed with their challenges involved. The novel architectures put forward by researchers are compiled and presented with the detailed analysis on FPGA based data management in data centers with more promising research directions on the horizon for the researchers.