An Easy Approach to Cool High-Performance FPGA Beasts in Lab Setups Our Mission: If It Is Packets, We Make It Go Faster! And with packets we mean: Networking using TCP/UDP/IP over 10G/25G/50G/100G Ethernet PCI Express (PCIe), CXL, OpenCAPI Data storage using SATA, SAS, USB, NVMe Video image processing using HDMI, DisplayPort, SDI, FPD-III. In today’s technologically advanced world, where the demand for high-speed networking and storage continues to surge, FPGAs have become essential for powering a wide range of innovative applications, including AI inference in data centers, autonomous vehicle systems, and industrial connectivity. These performance-intensive workloads often rely on multiple high-performance FPGA cards, and the resulting high density configurations make efficient heat dissipation critical to prevent overheating and ensure sustained performance as well as device longevity. High-performance FPGA cards, such as AMD Alveo™ cards designed for data center servers, depend on sufficient airflow for optimal cooling. However, in certain setups — like desktop test environments — achieving proper airflow can be challenging due to the absence of enclosures to guide air through the FPGA cards or no suitable mounting points for fans. While some cards, such as the AMD Alveo™ U280, offer both active and passive cooling options, others, like the AMD Alveo™ U55C High-Performance Compute Card, do not. Figure 1: MLE
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