Modulo scheduling with integrated register spilling for clustered VLIW architectures

Clustering is a technique to decentralize the design of future wide issue VLIW cores and enable them to meet the technology constraints in terms of cycle time, area and power dissipation. In a clustered design, registers and functional units are grouped in clusters so that new instructions are needed to move data between them. New aggressive instruction scheduling techniques are required to minimize the negative effect of resource clustering and delays in moving data around. In this paper we present a novel software pipelining technique that performs instruction scheduling with reduced register requirements, register allocation, register spilling and inter-cluster communication in a single step. The algorithm uses limited backtracking to reconsider previously taken decisions. This backtracking provides the algorithm with additional possibilities for obtaining high throughput schedules with low spill code requirements for clustered architectures. We show that the proposed approach outperforms previously proposed techniques and that it is very scalable independently of the number of clusters, the number of communication buses and communication latency. The paper also includes an exploration of some parameters in the design of future clustered VLIW cores.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Modulo scheduling with reduced register pressure

Software pipelining is a scheduling technique that is used by some product compilers in order to expose more instruction level parallelism out of innermost loops. Module scheduling refers to a class of algorithms for software pipelining. Most previous research on module scheduling has focused on reducing the number of cycles between the initiation of consecutive iterations (which is termed II) but has not considered the effect of the register pressure of the produced schedules. The register pressure increases as the instruction level parallelism increases. When the register requirements of a schedule are higher than the available number of registers, the loop must be rescheduled perhaps with a higher II. Therefore, the register pressure has an important impact on the performance of a schedule. This paper presents a novel heuristic module scheduling strategy that tries to generate schedules with the lowest II, and, from all the possible schedules with such II, it tries to select that with the lowest register requirements. The proposed method has been implemented in an experimental compiler and has been tested for the Perfect Club benchmarks. The results show that the proposed method achieves an optimal II for at least 97.5 percent of the loops and its compilation time is comparable to a conventional top-down approach, whereas the register requirements are lower. In addition, the proposed method is compared with some other existing methods. The results indicate that the proposed method performs better than other heuristic methods and almost as well as linear programming methods, which obtain optimal solutions but are impractical for product compilers because their computing cost grows exponentially with the number of operations in the loop body.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Hypernode reduction modulo scheduling

Software pipelining is a loop scheduling technique that extracts parallelism from loops by overlapping the execution of several consecutive iterations. Most prior scheduling research has focused on achieving minimum execution time, without regarding register requirements. Most strategies tend to stretch operand lifetimes because they schedule some operations too early or too late. The paper presents a novel strategy that simultaneously schedules some operations late and other operations early, minimizing all the stretchable dependencies and therefore reducing the registers required by the loop. The key of this strategy is a pre-ordering that selects the order in which the operations will be scheduled. The results show that the method described in this paper performs better than other heuristic methods and almost as well as a linear programming method but requiring much less time to produce the schedules.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Hierarchical clustered register file organization for VLIW processors

Technology projections indicate that wire delays will become one of the biggest constraints in future microprocessor designs. To avoid long wire delays and therefore long cycle times, processor cores must be partitioned into components so that most of the communication is done locally. In this paper, we propose a novel register file organization for VLIW cores that combines clustering with a hierarchical register file organization. Functional units are organized in clusters, each one with a local first level register file. The local register files are connected to a global second level register file, which provides access to memory. All intercluster communications are done through the second level register file. This paper also proposes MIRS-HC, a novel modulo scheduling technique that simultaneously performs instruction scheduling, cluster selection, inserts communication operations, performs register allocation and spill insertion for the proposed organization. The results show that although more cycles are required to execute applications, the execution time is reduced due to a shorter cycle time. In addition, the combination of clustering and hierarchy provides a larger design exploration space that trades-off performance and technology requirements.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Clustered VLIW architecture based on queue register files

Institute for Computing Systems ArchitectureInstruction-level parallelism (ILP) is a set of hardware and software techniques that allow parallel execution of machine operations. Superscalar architectures rely most heavily upon hardware schemes to identify parallelism among operations. Although successful in terms of performance, the hardware complexity involved might limit the scalability of this model. VLIW architectures use a different approach to exploit ILP. In this case all data dependence analyses and scheduling of operations are performed at compile time, resulting in a simpler hardware organization. This allows the inclusion of a larger number of functional units (FUs) into a single chip. IN spite of this relative simplification, the scalability of VLIW architectures can be constrained by the size and number of ports of the register file. VLIW machines often use software pipelining techniques to improve the execution of loop structures, which can increase the register pressure. Furthermore, the access time of a register file can be compromised by the number of ports, causing a negative impact on the machine cycle time. For these reasons we understand that the benefits of having parallel FUs, which have motivated the investigation of alternative machine designs. This thesis presents a scalar VLIW architecture comprising clusters of FUs and private register files. Register files organised as queue structures are used as a mechanism for inter-cluster communication, allowing the enforcement of fixed latency in the process. This scheme presents better possibilities in terms of scalability as the size of the individual register files is not determined by the total number of FUs, suggesting that the silicon area may grow only linearly with respect to the total number of FUs. However, the effectiveness of such an organization depends on the efficiency of the code partitioning strategy. We have developed an algorithm for a clustered VLIW architecture integrating both software pipelining and code partitioning in a a single procedure. Experimental results show it may allow performance levels close to an unclustered machine without communication restraints. Finally, we have developed silicon area and cycle time models to quantify the scalability of performance and cost for this class of architecture

A C++-embedded Domain-Specific Language for programming the MORA soft processor array

MORA is a novel platform for high-level FPGA programming of streaming vector and matrix operations, aimed at multimedia applications. It consists of soft array of pipelined low-complexity SIMD processors-in-memory (PIM). We present a Domain-Specific Language (DSL) for high-level programming of the MORA soft processor array. The DSL is embedded in C++, providing designers with a familiar language framework and the ability to compile designs using a standard compiler for functional testing before generating the FPGA bitstream using the MORA toolchain. The paper discusses the MORA-C++ DSL and the compilation route into the assembly for the MORA machine and provides examples to illustrate the programming model and performance

Using ACL2 to Verify Loop Pipelining in Behavioral Synthesis

Behavioral synthesis involves compiling an Electronic System-Level (ESL) design into its Register-Transfer Level (RTL) implementation. Loop pipelining is one of the most critical and complex transformations employed in behavioral synthesis. Certifying the loop pipelining algorithm is challenging because there is a huge semantic gap between the input sequential design and the output pipelined implementation making it infeasible to verify their equivalence with automated sequential equivalence checking techniques. We discuss our ongoing effort using ACL2 to certify loop pipelining transformation. The completion of the proof is work in progress. However, some of the insights developed so far may already be of value to the ACL2 community. In particular, we discuss the key invariant we formalized, which is very different from that used in most pipeline proofs. We discuss the needs for this invariant, its formalization in ACL2, and our envisioned proof using the invariant. We also discuss some trade-offs, challenges, and insights developed in course of the project.Comment: In Proceedings ACL2 2014, arXiv:1406.123