Efficient implementation of video processing algorithms on FPGA

The work contained in this portfolio thesis was carried out as part of an Engineering Doctorate (Eng.D) programme from the Institute for System Level Integration. The work was sponsored by Thales Optronics, and focuses on issues surrounding the implementation of video processing algorithms on field programmable gate arrays (FPGA). A description is given of FPGA technology and the currently dominant methods of designing and verifying firmware. The problems of translating a description of behaviour into one of structure are discussed, and some of the latest methodologies for tackling this problem are introduced. A number of algorithms are then looked at, including methods of contrast enhancement, deconvolution, and image fusion. Algorithms are characterised according to the nature of their execution flow, and this is used as justification for some of the design choices that are made. An efficient method of performing large two-dimensional convolutions is also described. The portfolio also contains a discussion of an FPGA implementation of a PID control algorithm, an overview of FPGA dynamic reconfigurability, and the development of a demonstration platform for rapid deployment of video processing algorithms in FPGA hardware

Hardware Acceleration Using Functional Languages

Cílem této práce je prozkoumat možnosti využití funkcionálního paradigmatu pro hardwarovou akceleraci, konkrétně pro datově paralelní úlohy. Úroveň abstrakce tradičních jazyků pro popis hardwaru, jako VHDL a Verilog, přestáví stačit. Pro popis na algoritmické či behaviorální úrovni se rozmáhají jazyky původně navržené pro vývoj softwaru a modelování, jako C/C++, SystemC nebo MATLAB. Funkcionální jazyky se s těmi imperativními nemůžou měřit v rozšířenosti a oblíbenosti mezi programátory, přesto je předčí v mnoha vlastnostech, např. ve verifikovatelnosti, schopnosti zachytit inherentní paralelismus a v kompaktnosti kódu. Pro akceleraci datově paralelních výpočtů se často používají jednotky FPGA, grafické karty (GPU) a vícejádrové procesory. Praktická část této práce rozšiřuje existující knihovnu Accelerate pro počítání na grafických kartách o výstup do VHDL. Accelerate je možno chápat jako doménově specifický jazyk vestavěný do Haskellu s backendem pro prostředí NVIDIA CUDA. Rozšíření pro vysokoúrovňovou syntézu obvodů ve VHDL představené v této práci používá stejný jazyk a frontend.The aim of this thesis is to research how the functional paradigm can be used for hardware acceleration with an emphasis on data-parallel tasks. The level of abstraction of the traditional hardware description languages, such as VHDL or Verilog, is becoming to low. High-level languages from the domains of software development and modeling, such as C/C++, SystemC or MATLAB, are experiencing a boom for hardware description on the algorithmic or behavioral level. Functional Languages are not so commonly used, but they outperform imperative languages in verification, the ability to capture inherent paralellism and the compactness of code. Data-parallel task are often accelerated on FPGAs, GPUs and multicore processors. In this thesis, we use a library for general-purpose GPU programs called Accelerate and extend it to produce VHDL. Accelerate is a domain-specific language embedded into Haskell with a backend for the NVIDIA CUDA platform. We use the language and its frontend, and create a new backend for high-level synthesis of circuits in VHDL.

Unbounded Scalable Hardware Verification.

Model checking is a formal verification method that has been successfully applied to real-world hardware and software designs. Model checking tools, however, encounter the so-called state-explosion problem, since the size of the state spaces of such designs is exponential in the number of their state elements. In this thesis, we address this problem by exploiting the power of two complementary approaches: (a) counterexample-guided abstraction and refinement (CEGAR) of the design's datapath; and (b) the recently-introduced incremental induction algorithms for approximate reachability. These approaches are well-suited for the verification of control-centric properties in hardware designs consisting of wide datapaths and complex control logic. They also handle most complex design errors in typical hardware designs. Datapath abstraction prunes irrelevant bit-level details of datapath elements, thus greatly reducing the size of the state space that must be analyzed and allowing the verification to be focused on the control logic, where most errors originate. The induction-based approximate reachability algorithms offer the potential of significantly reducing the number of iterations needed to prove/disprove given properties by avoiding the implicit or explicit enumeration of reachable states. Our implementation of this verification framework, which we call the Averroes system, extends the approximate reachability algorithms at the bit level to first-order logic with equality and uninterpreted functions. To facilitate this extension, we formally define the solution space and state space of the abstract transition system produced by datapath abstraction. In addition, we develop an efficient way to represent sets of abstract solutions involving present- and next-states and a systematic way to project such solutions onto the space of just the present-state variables. To further increase the scalability of the Averroes verification system, we introduce the notion of structural abstraction, which extends datapath abstraction with two optimizations for better classification of state variables as either datapath or control, and with efficient memory abstraction techniques. We demonstrate the scalability of this approach by showing that Averroes significantly outperforms bit-level verification on a number of industrial benchmarks.PhDComputer Science and EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133375/1/suholee_1.pd

Contributions à l'optimisation de programmes et à la synthèse de circuits haut-niveau

Since the end of Dennard scaling, power efficiency is the limiting factor for large-scale computing. Hardware accelerators such as reconfigurable circuits (FPGA, CGRA) or Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) were introduced to improve the performance under a limited energy budget, resulting into complex heterogeneous platforms. This document presents a synthetic description of my research activities over the last decade on compilers for high-performance computing and high-level synthesis of circuits (HLS) for FPGA accelerators. Specifically, my contributions covers both theoretical and practical aspects of automatic parallelization and HLS in a general theoretical framework called the polyhedral model.A first chapter describes our contributions to loop tiling, a key program transformation for automatic parallelization which splits the computation atomic blocks called tiles.We rephrase loop tiling in the polyhedral model to enable any polyhedral tile shape whose size depends on a single parameter (monoparametric tiling), and we present a tiling transformation for programs with reductions – accumulations w.r.t. an associative/commutative operator. Our results open the way for semantic program transformations ; program transformations which does not preserve the computation but still lead to an equivalent program.A second chapter describes our contributions to algorithm recognition. A compiler optimization will never replace a good algorithm, hence the idea to recognize algorithm instances in a program and to substitute them by a call to a performance library. In our PhD thesis, we have addressed the recognition of templates – functionswith first-order variables – into programs and its application to program optimization. We propose a complementary algorithm recognition framework which leverages our monoparametric tiling and our reduction tiling transformations. This automates semantic tiling, a new semantic program transformation which increases the grain of operators (scalar → matrix).A third chapter presents our contributions to the synthesis of communications with an off-chip memory in the context of high-level circuit synthesis (HLS). We propose an execution model based on loop tiling, a pipelined architecture and a source-level compilation algorithm which, connected to the C2H HLS tool from Altera, ends up to a FPGA configuration with minimized data transfers. Our compilation algorithm is optimal – the data are loaded as late as possible and stored as soon as possible with a maximal reuse.A fourth chapter presents our contributions to design a unified polyhedral compilation model for high-level circuit synthesis.We present the Data-aware Process Networks (DPN), a dataflow intermediate representation which leverages the ideas developed in chapter 3 to explicit the data transfers with an off-chip memory. We propose an algorithm to compile a DPN from a sequential program, and we present our contribution to the synthesis of DPN to a circuit. In particular, we present our algorithms to compile the control, the channels and the synchronizations of a DPN. These results are used in the production compiler of the Xtremlogic start-up.Depuis la fin du Dennard scaling, l’efficacité énergétique est le facteur limitant pour le calcul haute performance. Les accélérateurs matériels comme les circuits reconfigurables (FPGA, CGRA) ou les accélérateurs graphiques (GPUs) ont été introduits pour améliorer les performances sous un budget énergétique limité, menant à des plateformes hétérogènes complexes.Mes travaux de recherche portent sur les compilateurs et la synthèse de circuits haut-niveau (High-Level Synthesis, HLS) pour le calcul haute-performance. Specifiquement, mes contributions couvrent les aspects théoriques etpratiques de la parallélisation automatique et la HLS dans le cadre général du modèle polyédrique.Un premier chapitre décrit mes contributions au tuilage de boucles, une transformation fondamentale pour la parallélisation automatique, qui découpe le calcul en sous-calculs atomiques appelés tuiles. Nous reformulons le tuilage de boucles dans le modèle polyédrique pour permettre n’importe tuile polytopique dont la taille dépend d’un facteur homothétique (tuilage monoparamétrique), et nous décrivons une transformation de tuilage pour des programmes avec des réductions – une accumulation selon un opérateur associative et commutatif. Nos résultats ouvrent la voie à des transformations de programme sémantiques ; qui ne préservent pas le calcul, mais produisent un programme équivalent.Un second chapitre décrit mes contributions à la reconnaissance d’algorithmes. Une optimisation de compilateur ne remplacera jamais un bon algorithme, d’où l’idée de reconnaître les instances d’un algorithme dans un programme et de les substituer par un appel vers une bibliothèque hauteperformance, chaque fois que c’est possible et utile.Dans notre thèse, nous avons traité la reconnaissance de templates – des fonctions avec des variables d’ordre 1 – dans un programme et son application à l’optimisation de programes. Nous proposons une approche complémentaire qui s’appuie sur notre tuilage monoparamétrique complété par une transformation pour tuiler les réductions. Ceci automatise le tuilage sémantique, une nouvelle transformation sémantique qui augmente le grain des opérateurs (scalaire → matrice).Un troisième chapitre présente mes contributions à la synthèse des communications avec une mémoire off-chip dans le contexte de la synthèse de circuits haut-niveau. Nous proposons un modèle d’exécution basé sur le tuilage de boucles, une architecture pipelinée et un algorithme de compilation source-à-source qui, connecté à l’outil de HLS C2H d’Altera, produit une configuration de circuit FPGA qui réalise un volume minimal de transferts de données. Notre algorithme est optimal – les données sont chargées le plus tard possible et stockées le plus tôt possible, avec une réutilisation maximale et sans redondances.Enfin, un quatrième chapitre présente mes contributions pour construire un modèle de compilation polyédrique unifié pour la synthèse de circuits haut-niveau.Nous présentons les réseaux de processus DPN (Data-aware Process Networks), une représentation intermédiaire dataflow qui s’appuie sur les idées développées au chapitre 3 pour expliciter les transferts de données entre le circuit et la mémoire off-chip. Nous proposons une suite d’algorithmes pour compiler un DPN à partir d’un programme séquentiel et nous présentons nos contributions à la synthèse d’un DPN en circuit. En particulier, nous présentons nos algorithmes pour compiler le contrôle, les canaux et les synchronisations d’un DPN. Ces résultats sont utilisés dans le compilateur de production de la start-up XtremLogic

Proceedings of the 22nd Conference on Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design – FMCAD 2022

The Conference on Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design (FMCAD) is an annual conference on the theory and applications of formal methods in hardware and system verification. FMCAD provides a leading forum to researchers in academia and industry for presenting and discussing groundbreaking methods, technologies, theoretical results, and tools for reasoning formally about computing systems. FMCAD covers formal aspects of computer-aided system design including verification, specification, synthesis, and testing

Model checking for a first-order temporal logic using multiway decision graphs

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal

Proceedings of the 22nd Conference on Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design – FMCAD 2022

The Conference on Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design (FMCAD) is an annual conference on the theory and applications of formal methods in hardware and system verification. FMCAD provides a leading forum to researchers in academia and industry for presenting and discussing groundbreaking methods, technologies, theoretical results, and tools for reasoning formally about computing systems. FMCAD covers formal aspects of computer-aided system design including verification, specification, synthesis, and testing