6,225 research outputs found
Highly parallel computation
Highly parallel computing architectures are the only means to achieve the computation rates demanded by advanced scientific problems. A decade of research has demonstrated the feasibility of such machines and current research focuses on which architectures designated as multiple instruction multiple datastream (MIMD) and single instruction multiple datastream (SIMD) have produced the best results to date; neither shows a decisive advantage for most near-homogeneous scientific problems. For scientific problems with many dissimilar parts, more speculative architectures such as neural networks or data flow may be needed
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Exploiting iteration-level parallelism in dataflow programs
The term "dataflow" generally encompasses three distinct aspects of computation - a data-driven model of computation, a functional/declarative programming language, and a special-purpose multiprocessor architecture. In this paper we decouple the language and architecture issues by demonstrating that declarative programming is a suitable vehicle for the programming of conventional distributed-memory multiprocessors.This is achieved by appling several transformations to the compiled declarative program to achieve iteration-level (rather than instruction-level) parallelism. The transformations first group individual instructions into sequential light-weight processes, and then insert primitives to: (1) cause array allocation to be distributed over multiple processors, (2) cause computation to follow the data distribution by inserting an index filtering mechanism into a given loop and spawning a copy of it on all PEs; the filter causes each instance of that loop to operate on a different subrange of the index variable.The underlying model of computation is a dataflow/von Neumann hybrid in that exection within a process is control-driven while the creation, blocking, and activation of processes is data-driven.The performance of this process-oriented dataflow system (PODS) is demonstrated using the hydrodynamics simulation benchmark called SIMPLE, where a 19-fold speedup on a 32-processor architecture has been achieved
Fault tolerant architectures for integrated aircraft electronics systems, task 2
The architectural basis for an advanced fault tolerant on-board computer to succeed the current generation of fault tolerant computers is examined. The network error tolerant system architecture is studied with particular attention to intercluster configurations and communication protocols, and to refined reliability estimates. The diagnosis of faults, so that appropriate choices for reconfiguration can be made is discussed. The analysis relates particularly to the recognition of transient faults in a system with tasks at many levels of priority. The demand driven data-flow architecture, which appears to have possible application in fault tolerant systems is described and work investigating the feasibility of automatic generation of aircraft flight control programs from abstract specifications is reported
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Computer-aided programming for multiprocessing systems
As both the number of processors and the complexity of problems to be solved increase, programming multiprocessing systems becomes more difficult and error-prone. This report discusses parallel models of computation and tools for computer-aided programming (CAP). Program development tools are necessary since programmers are not able to develop complex parallel programs efficiently. In particular, a CAP tool, named Hypertool, is described here. It performs scheduling and handles the communication primitive insertion automatically so that many errors are eliminated. It also generates the performance estimates and other program quality measures to help programmers in improving their algorithms and programs. Experiments have shown that up to a 300% performance improvement can be achieved by computer-aided programming
A Simple Multiprocessor Management System for Event-Parallel Computing
Offline software using TCP/IP sockets to distribute particle physics events
to multiple UNIX/RISC workstations is described. A modular, building block
approach was taken, which allowed tailoring to solve specific tasks efficiently
and simply as they arose. The modest, initial cost was having to learn about
sockets for interprocess communication. This multiprocessor management software
has been used to control the reconstruction of eight billion raw data events
from Fermilab Experiment E791.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, compressed Postscript, LaTeX. Submitted to NI
Empowering parallel computing with field programmable gate arrays
After more than 30 years, reconfigurable computing has grown from a concept to a mature field of science and technology. The cornerstone of this evolution is the field programmable gate array, a building block enabling the configuration of a custom hardware architecture. The departure from static von Neumannlike architectures opens the way to eliminate the instruction overhead and to optimize the execution speed and power consumption. FPGAs now live in a growing ecosystem of development tools, enabling software programmers to map algorithms directly onto hardware. Applications abound in many directions, including data centers, IoT, AI, image processing and space exploration. The increasing success of FPGAs is largely due to an improved toolchain with solid high-level synthesis support as well as a better integration with processor and memory systems. On the other hand, long compile times and complex design exploration remain areas for improvement. In this paper we address the evolution of FPGAs towards advanced multi-functional accelerators, discuss different programming models and their HLS language implementations, as well as high-performance tuning of FPGAs integrated into a heterogeneous platform. We pinpoint fallacies and pitfalls, and identify opportunities for language enhancements and architectural refinements
Eyeriss v2: A Flexible Accelerator for Emerging Deep Neural Networks on Mobile Devices
A recent trend in DNN development is to extend the reach of deep learning
applications to platforms that are more resource and energy constrained, e.g.,
mobile devices. These endeavors aim to reduce the DNN model size and improve
the hardware processing efficiency, and have resulted in DNNs that are much
more compact in their structures and/or have high data sparsity. These compact
or sparse models are different from the traditional large ones in that there is
much more variation in their layer shapes and sizes, and often require
specialized hardware to exploit sparsity for performance improvement. Thus,
many DNN accelerators designed for large DNNs do not perform well on these
models. In this work, we present Eyeriss v2, a DNN accelerator architecture
designed for running compact and sparse DNNs. To deal with the widely varying
layer shapes and sizes, it introduces a highly flexible on-chip network, called
hierarchical mesh, that can adapt to the different amounts of data reuse and
bandwidth requirements of different data types, which improves the utilization
of the computation resources. Furthermore, Eyeriss v2 can process sparse data
directly in the compressed domain for both weights and activations, and
therefore is able to improve both processing speed and energy efficiency with
sparse models. Overall, with sparse MobileNet, Eyeriss v2 in a 65nm CMOS
process achieves a throughput of 1470.6 inferences/sec and 2560.3 inferences/J
at a batch size of 1, which is 12.6x faster and 2.5x more energy efficient than
the original Eyeriss running MobileNet. We also present an analysis methodology
called Eyexam that provides a systematic way of understanding the performance
limits for DNN processors as a function of specific characteristics of the DNN
model and accelerator design; it applies these characteristics as sequential
steps to increasingly tighten the bound on the performance limits.Comment: accepted for publication in IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected
Topics in Circuits and Systems. This extended version on arXiv also includes
Eyexam in the appendi
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