37 research outputs found
ARITHMETIC LOGIC UNIT ARCHITECTURES WITH DYNAMICALLY DEFINED PRECISION
Modern central processing units (CPUs) employ arithmetic logic units (ALUs) that support statically defined precisions, often adhering to industry standards. Although CPU manufacturers highly optimize their ALUs, industry standard precisions embody accuracy and performance compromises for general purpose deployment. Hence, optimizing ALU precision holds great potential for improving speed and energy efficiency. Previous research on multiple precision ALUs focused on predefined, static precisions. Little previous work addressed ALU architectures with customized, dynamically defined precision. This dissertation presents approaches for developing dynamic precision ALU architectures for both fixed-point and floating-point to enable better performance, energy efficiency, and numeric accuracy. These new architectures enable dynamically defined precision, including support for vectorization. The new architectures also prevent performance and energy loss due to applying unnecessarily high precision on computations, which often happens with statically defined standard precisions. The new ALU architectures support different precisions through the use of configurable sub-blocks, with this dissertation including demonstration implementations for floating point adder, multiply, and fused multiply-add (FMA) circuits with 4-bit sub-blocks. For these circuits, the dynamic precision ALU speed is nearly the same as traditional ALU approaches, although the dynamic precision ALU is nearly twice as large
Hardware acceleration of photon mapping
PhD ThesisThe quest for realism in computer-generated graphics has yielded a range of algorithmic
techniques, the most advanced of which are capable of rendering images at close to photorealistic
quality. Due to the realism available, it is now commonplace that computer graphics are used in
the creation of movie sequences, architectural renderings, medical imagery and product
visualisations.
This work concentrates on the photon mapping algorithm [1, 2], a physically based global
illumination rendering algorithm. Photon mapping excels in producing highly realistic, physically
accurate images.
A drawback to photon mapping however is its rendering times, which can be significantly longer
than other, albeit less realistic, algorithms. Not surprisingly, this increase in execution time is
associated with a high computational cost. This computation is usually performed using the
general purpose central processing unit (CPU) of a personal computer (PC), with the algorithm
implemented as a software routine. Other options available for processing these algorithms
include desktop PC graphics processing units (GPUs) and custom designed acceleration hardware
devices.
GPUs tend to be efficient when dealing with less realistic rendering solutions such as rasterisation,
however with their recent drive towards increased programmability they can also be used to
process more realistic algorithms. A drawback to the use of GPUs is that these algorithms often
have to be reworked to make optimal use of the limited resources available.
There are very few custom hardware devices available for acceleration of the photon mapping
algorithm. Ray-tracing is the predecessor to photon mapping, and although not capable of
producing the same physical accuracy and therefore realism, there are similarities between the
algorithms. There have been several hardware prototypes, and at least one commercial offering,
created with the goal of accelerating ray-trace rendering [3]. However, properties making many of
these proposals suitable for the acceleration of ray-tracing are not shared by photon mapping.
There are even fewer proposals for acceleration of the additional functions found only in photon
mapping.
All of these approaches to algorithm acceleration offer limited scalability. GPUs are inherently
difficult to scale, while many of the custom hardware devices available thus far make use of large
processing elements and complex acceleration data structures.
In this work we make use of three novel approaches in the design of highly scalable specialised
hardware structures for the acceleration of the photon mapping algorithm. Increased scalability is
gained through:
• The use of a brute-force approach in place of the commonly used smart approach, thus
eliminating much data pre-processing, complex data structures and large processing units
often required.
• The use of Logarithmic Number System (LNS) arithmetic computation, which facilitates a
reduction in processing area requirement.
• A novel redesign of the photon inclusion test, used within the photon search method of
the photon mapping algorithm. This allows an intelligent memory structure to be used for
the search.
The design uses two hardware structures, both of which accelerate one core rendering function.
Renderings produced using field programmable gate array (FPGA) based prototypes are presented,
along with details of 90nm synthesised versions of the designs which show that close to an orderof-
magnitude speedup over a software implementation is possible. Due to the scalable nature of
the design, it is likely that any advantage can be maintained in the face of improving processor
speeds.
Significantly, due to the brute-force approach adopted, it is possible to eliminate an often-used
software acceleration method. This means that the device can interface almost directly to a frontend
modelling package, minimising much of the pre-processing required by most other proposals
Comparison of logarithmic and floating-point number systems implemented on Xilinx Virtex-II field-programmable gate arrays
The aim of this thesis is to compare the implementation of parameterisable LNS (logarithmic number system) and floating-point high dynamic range number systems on FPGA. The Virtex/Virtex-II range of FPGAs from Xilinx, which are the most popular FPGA technology, are used to implement the designs. The study focuses on using the low level primitives of the technology in an efficient way and so initially the design issues in implementing fixed-point operators are considered. The four basic operations of addition, multiplication, division and square root are considered. Carry- free adders, ripple-carry adders, parallel multipliers and digit recurrence division and square root are discussed. The floating-point operators use the word format and exceptions as described by the IEEE std-754. A dual-path adder implementation is described in detail, as are floating-point multiplier, divider and square root components. Results and comparisons with other works are given. The efficient implementation of function evaluation methods is considered next. An overview of current FPGA methods is given and a new piecewise polynomial implementation using the Taylor series is presented and compared with other designs in the literature. In the next section the LNS word format, accuracy and exceptions are described and two new LNS addition/subtraction function approximations are described. The algorithms for performing multiplication, division and powering in the LNS domain are also described and are compared with other designs in the open literature. Parameterisable conversion algorithms to convert to/from the fixed-point domain from/to the LNS and floating-point domain are described and implementation results given. In the next chapter MATLAB bit-true software models are given that have the exact functionality as the hardware models. The interfaces of the models are given and a serial communication system to perform low speed system tests is described. A comparison of the LNS and floating-point number systems in terms of area and delay is given. Different functions implemented in LNS and floating-point arithmetic are also compared and conclusions are drawn. The results show that when the LNS is implemented with a 6-bit or less characteristic it is superior to floating-point. However, for larger characteristic lengths the floating-point system is more efficient due to the delay and exponential area increase of the LNS addition operator. The LNS is beneficial for larger characteristics than 6-bits only for specialist applications that require a high portion of division, multiplication, square root, powering operations and few additions
A Survey on Design Methodologies for Accelerating Deep Learning on Heterogeneous Architectures
In recent years, the field of Deep Learning has seen many disruptive and
impactful advancements. Given the increasing complexity of deep neural
networks, the need for efficient hardware accelerators has become more and more
pressing to design heterogeneous HPC platforms. The design of Deep Learning
accelerators requires a multidisciplinary approach, combining expertise from
several areas, spanning from computer architecture to approximate computing,
computational models, and machine learning algorithms. Several methodologies
and tools have been proposed to design accelerators for Deep Learning,
including hardware-software co-design approaches, high-level synthesis methods,
specific customized compilers, and methodologies for design space exploration,
modeling, and simulation. These methodologies aim to maximize the exploitable
parallelism and minimize data movement to achieve high performance and energy
efficiency. This survey provides a holistic review of the most influential
design methodologies and EDA tools proposed in recent years to implement Deep
Learning accelerators, offering the reader a wide perspective in this rapidly
evolving field. In particular, this work complements the previous survey
proposed by the same authors in [203], which focuses on Deep Learning hardware
accelerators for heterogeneous HPC platforms
Design and optimization of approximate multipliers and dividers for integer and floating-point arithmetic
The dawn of the twenty-first century has witnessed an explosion in the number of digital devices and data. While the emerging deep learning algorithms to extract information from this vast sea of data are becoming increasingly compute-intensive, traditional means of improving computing power are no longer yielding gains at the same rate due to the diminishing returns from traditional technology scaling. To minimize the increasing gap between computational demands and the available resources, the paradigm of approximate computing is emerging as one of the potential solutions. Specifically, the resource-efficient approximate arithmetic units promise overall system efficiency, since most of the compute-intensive applications are dominated by arithmetic operations.
This thesis primarily presents design techniques for approximate hardware multipliers and dividers. The thesis presents the design of two approximate integer multipliers and an approximate integer divider. These are: an error-configurable minimally-biased approximate integer multiplier (MBM), an error-configurable reduced-error approximate log based multiplier (REALM), and error-configurable integer divider INZeD. The two multiplier designs and the divider designs are based on the coupling of novel mathematically formulated error-reduction mechanisms in the classical approximate log based multiplier and dividers, respectively. They exhibit very low error bias and offer Pareto-optimal error vs. resource-efficiency trade-offs when compared with the state-of-the-art approximate integer multipliers/dividers. Further, the thesis also presents design of approximate floating-point multipliers and dividers. These designs utilize the optimized versions of the proposed MBM and REALM multipliers for mantissa multiplications and the proposed INZeD divider for mantissa division, and offer better design trade-offs than traditional precision scaling.
The existing approximate integer dividers as well as the proposed INZeD suffer from unreasonably high worst-case error. This thesis presents WEID, which is a novel light-weight method for reducing worst-case error in approximate dividers. Finally, the thesis presents a methodology for selection of approximate arithmetic units for a given application. The methodology is based on a novel selection algorithm and utilizes the subrange error characterization of approximate arithmetic units, which performs error characterization independently in different segments of the input range
Hardware acceleration of photon mapping
The quest for realism in computer-generated graphics has yielded a range of algorithmic techniques, the most advanced of which are capable of rendering images at close to photorealistic quality. Due to the realism available, it is now commonplace that computer graphics are used in the creation of movie sequences, architectural renderings, medical imagery and product visualisations. This work concentrates on the photon mapping algorithm [1, 2], a physically based global illumination rendering algorithm. Photon mapping excels in producing highly realistic, physically accurate images. A drawback to photon mapping however is its rendering times, which can be significantly longer than other, albeit less realistic, algorithms. Not surprisingly, this increase in execution time is associated with a high computational cost. This computation is usually performed using the general purpose central processing unit (CPU) of a personal computer (PC), with the algorithm implemented as a software routine. Other options available for processing these algorithms include desktop PC graphics processing units (GPUs) and custom designed acceleration hardware devices. GPUs tend to be efficient when dealing with less realistic rendering solutions such as rasterisation, however with their recent drive towards increased programmability they can also be used to process more realistic algorithms. A drawback to the use of GPUs is that these algorithms often have to be reworked to make optimal use of the limited resources available. There are very few custom hardware devices available for acceleration of the photon mapping algorithm. Ray-tracing is the predecessor to photon mapping, and although not capable of producing the same physical accuracy and therefore realism, there are similarities between the algorithms. There have been several hardware prototypes, and at least one commercial offering, created with the goal of accelerating ray-trace rendering [3]. However, properties making many of these proposals suitable for the acceleration of ray-tracing are not shared by photon mapping. There are even fewer proposals for acceleration of the additional functions found only in photon mapping. All of these approaches to algorithm acceleration offer limited scalability. GPUs are inherently difficult to scale, while many of the custom hardware devices available thus far make use of large processing elements and complex acceleration data structures. In this work we make use of three novel approaches in the design of highly scalable specialised hardware structures for the acceleration of the photon mapping algorithm. Increased scalability is gained through: • The use of a brute-force approach in place of the commonly used smart approach, thus eliminating much data pre-processing, complex data structures and large processing units often required. • The use of Logarithmic Number System (LNS) arithmetic computation, which facilitates a reduction in processing area requirement. • A novel redesign of the photon inclusion test, used within the photon search method of the photon mapping algorithm. This allows an intelligent memory structure to be used for the search. The design uses two hardware structures, both of which accelerate one core rendering function. Renderings produced using field programmable gate array (FPGA) based prototypes are presented, along with details of 90nm synthesised versions of the designs which show that close to an orderof- magnitude speedup over a software implementation is possible. Due to the scalable nature of the design, it is likely that any advantage can be maintained in the face of improving processor speeds. Significantly, due to the brute-force approach adopted, it is possible to eliminate an often-used software acceleration method. This means that the device can interface almost directly to a frontend modelling package, minimising much of the pre-processing required by most other proposals.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo
The 1992 4th NASA SERC Symposium on VLSI Design
Papers from the fourth annual NASA Symposium on VLSI Design, co-sponsored by the IEEE, are presented. Each year this symposium is organized by the NASA Space Engineering Research Center (SERC) at the University of Idaho and is held in conjunction with a quarterly meeting of the NASA Data System Technology Working Group (DSTWG). One task of the DSTWG is to develop new electronic technologies that will meet next generation electronic data system needs. The symposium provides insights into developments in VLSI and digital systems which can be used to increase data systems performance. The NASA SERC is proud to offer, at its fourth symposium on VLSI design, presentations by an outstanding set of individuals from national laboratories, the electronics industry, and universities. These speakers share insights into next generation advances that will serve as a basis for future VLSI design