KAVUAKA: a low-power application-specific processor architecture for digital hearing aids

The power consumption of digital hearing aids is very restricted due to their small physical size and the available hardware resources for signal processing are limited. However, there is a demand for more processing performance to make future hearing aids more useful and smarter. Future hearing aids should be able to detect, localize, and recognize target speakers in complex acoustic environments to further improve the speech intelligibility of the individual hearing aid user. Computationally intensive algorithms are required for this task. To maintain acceptable battery life, the hearing aid processing architecture must be highly optimized for extremely low-power consumption and high processing performance.The integration of application-specific instruction-set processors (ASIPs) into hearing aids enables a wide range of architectural customizations to meet the stringent power consumption and performance requirements. In this thesis, the application-specific hearing aid processor KAVUAKA is presented, which is customized and optimized with state-of-the-art hearing aid algorithms such as speaker localization, noise reduction, beamforming algorithms, and speech recognition. Specialized and application-specific instructions are designed and added to the baseline instruction set architecture (ISA). Among the major contributions are a multiply-accumulate (MAC) unit for real- and complex-valued numbers, architectures for power reduction during register accesses, co-processors and a low-latency audio interface. With the proposed MAC architecture, the KAVUAKA processor requires 16 % less cycles for the computation of a 128-point fast Fourier transform (FFT) compared to related programmable digital signal processors. The power consumption during register file accesses is decreased by 6 %to 17 % with isolation and by-pass techniques. The hardware-induced audio latency is 34 %lower compared to related audio interfaces for frame size of 64 samples.The final hearing aid system-on-chip (SoC) with four KAVUAKA processor cores and ten co-processors is integrated as an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) using a 40 nm low-power technology. The die size is 3.6 mm2. Each of the processors and co-processors contains individual customizations and hardware features with a varying datapath width between 24-bit to 64-bit. The core area of the 64-bit processor configuration is 0.134 mm2. The processors are organized in two clusters that share memory, an audio interface, co-processors and serial interfaces. The average power consumption at a clock speed of 10 MHz is 2.4 mW for SoC and 0.6 mW for the 64-bit processor.Case studies with four reference hearing aid algorithms are used to present and evaluate the proposed hardware architectures and optimizations. The program code for each processor and co-processor is generated and optimized with evolutionary algorithms for operation merging,instruction scheduling and register allocation. The KAVUAKA processor architecture is com-pared to related processor architectures in terms of processing performance, average power consumption, and silicon area requirements

Dynamically reconfigurable architecture for embedded computer vision systems

The objective of this research work is to design, develop and implement a new architecture which integrates on the same chip all the processing levels of a complete Computer Vision system, so that the execution is efficient without compromising the power consumption while keeping a reduced cost. For this purpose, an analysis and classification of different mathematical operations and algorithms commonly used in Computer Vision are carried out, as well as a in-depth review of the image processing capabilities of current-generation hardware devices. This permits to determine the requirements and the key aspects for an efficient architecture. A representative set of algorithms is employed as benchmark to evaluate the proposed architecture, which is implemented on an FPGA-based system-on-chip. Finally, the prototype is compared to other related approaches in order to determine its advantages and weaknesses

Parallel and Distributed Computing

The 14 chapters presented in this book cover a wide variety of representative works ranging from hardware design to application development. Particularly, the topics that are addressed are programmable and reconfigurable devices and systems, dependability of GPUs (General Purpose Units), network topologies, cache coherence protocols, resource allocation, scheduling algorithms, peertopeer networks, largescale network simulation, and parallel routines and algorithms. In this way, the articles included in this book constitute an excellent reference for engineers and researchers who have particular interests in each of these topics in parallel and distributed computing

Hardware/Software Co-design for Multicore Architectures

Siirretty Doriast

새로운 메모리 기술을 기반으로 한 메모리 시스템 설계 기술

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 전기·컴퓨터공학부, 2017. 2. 최기영.Performance and energy efficiency of modern computer systems are largely dominated by the memory system. This memory bottleneck has been exacerbated in the past few years with (1) architectural innovations for improving the efficiency of computation units (e.g., chip multiprocessors), which shift the major cause of inefficiency from processors to memory, and (2) the emergence of data-intensive applications, which demands a large capacity of main memory and an excessive amount of memory bandwidth to efficiently handle such workloads. In order to address this memory wall challenge, this dissertation aims at exploring the potential of emerging memory technologies and designing a high-performance, energy-efficient memory hierarchy that is aware of and leverages the characteristics of such new memory technologies. The first part of this dissertation focuses on energy-efficient on-chip cache design based on a new non-volatile memory technology called Spin-Transfer Torque RAM (STT-RAM). When STT-RAM is used to build on-chip caches, it provides several advantages over conventional charge-based memory (e.g., SRAM or eDRAM), such as non-volatility, lower static power, and higher density. However, simply replacing SRAM caches with STT-RAM rather increases the energy consumption because write operations of STT-RAM are slower and more energy-consuming than those of SRAM. To address this challenge, we propose four novel architectural techniques that can alleviate the impact of inefficient STT-RAM write operations on system performance and energy consumption. First, we apply STT-RAM to instruction caches (where write operations are relatively infrequent) and devise a power-gating mechanism called LASIC, which leverages the non-volatility of STT-RAM to turn off STT-RAM instruction caches inside small loops. Second, we propose lower-bits cache, which exploits the narrow bit-width characteristics of application data by caching frequent bit-flips at lower bits in a small SRAM cache. Third, we present prediction hybrid cache, an SRAM/STT-RAM hybrid cache whose block placement between SRAM and STT-RAM is determined by predicting the write intensity of each cache block with a new hardware structure called write intensity predictor. Fourth, we propose DASCA, which predicts write operations that can bypass the cache without incurring extra cache misses (called dead writes) and lets the last-level cache bypass such dead writes to reduce write energy consumption. The second part of this dissertation architects intelligent main memory and its host architecture support based on logic-enabled DRAM. Traditionally, main memory has served the sole purpose of storing data because the extra manufacturing cost of implementing rich functionality (e.g., computation) on a DRAM die was unacceptably high. However, the advent of 3D die stacking now provides a practical, cost-effective way to integrate complex logic circuits into main memory, thereby opening up the possibilities for intelligent main memory. For example, it can be utilized to implement advanced memory management features (e.g., scheduling, power management, etc.) inside memoryit can be also used to offload computation to main memory, which allows us to overcome the memory bandwidth bottleneck caused by narrow off-chip channels (commonly known as processing-in-memory or PIM). The remaining questions are what to implement inside main memory and how to integrate and expose such new features to existing systems. In order to answer these questions, we propose four system designs that utilize logic-enabled DRAM to improve system performance and energy efficiency. First, we utilize the existing logic layer of a Hybrid Memory Cube (a commercial logic-enabled DRAM product) to (1) dynamically turn off some of its off-chip links by monitoring the actual bandwidth demand and (2) integrate prefetch buffer into main memory to perform aggressive prefetching without consuming off-chip link bandwidth. Second, we propose a scalable accelerator for large-scale graph processing called Tesseract, in which graph processing computation is offloaded to specialized processors inside main memory in order to achieve memory-capacity-proportional performance. Third, we design a low-overhead PIM architecture for near-term adoption called PIM-enabled instructions, where PIM operations are interfaced as cache-coherent, virtually-addressed host processor instructions that can be executed either by the host processor or in main memory depending on the data locality. Fourth, we propose an energy-efficient PIM system called aggregation-in-memory, which can adaptively execute PIM operations at any level of the memory hierarchy and provides a fully automated compiler toolchain that transforms existing applications to use PIM operations without programmer intervention.Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Inefficiencies in the Current Memory Systems 2 1.1.1 On-Chip Caches 2 1.1.2 Main Memory 2 1.2 New Memory Technologies: Opportunities and Challenges 3 1.2.1 Energy-Efficient On-Chip Caches based on STT-RAM 3 1.2.2 Intelligent Main Memory based on Logic-Enabled DRAM 6 1.3 Dissertation Overview 9 Chapter 2 Previous Work 11 2.1 Energy-Efficient On-Chip Caches based on STT-RAM 11 2.1.1 Hybrid Caches 11 2.1.2 Volatile STT-RAM 13 2.1.3 Redundant Write Elimination 14 2.2 Intelligent Main Memory based on Logic-Enabled DRAM 15 2.2.1 PIM Architectures in the 1990s 15 2.2.2 Modern PIM Architectures based on 3D Stacking 15 2.2.3 Modern PIM Architectures on Memory Dies 17 Chapter 3 Loop-Aware Sleepy Instruction Cache 19 3.1 Architecture 20 3.1.1 Loop Cache 21 3.1.2 Loop-Aware Sleep Controller 22 3.2 Evaluation and Discussion 24 3.2.1 Simulation Environment 24 3.2.2 Energy 25 3.2.3 Performance 27 3.2.4 Sensitivity Analysis 27 3.3 Summary 28 Chapter 4 Lower-Bits Cache 29 4.1 Architecture 29 4.2 Experiments 32 4.2.1 Simulator and Cache Model 32 4.2.2 Results 33 4.3 Summary 34 Chapter 5 Prediction Hybrid Cache 35 5.1 Problem and Motivation 37 5.1.1 Problem Definition 37 5.1.2 Motivation 37 5.2 Write Intensity Predictor 38 5.2.1 Keeping Track of Trigger Instructions 39 5.2.2 Identifying Hot Trigger Instructions 40 5.2.3 Dynamic Set Sampling 41 5.2.4 Summary 42 5.3 Prediction Hybrid Cache 43 5.3.1 Need for Write Intensity Prediction 43 5.3.2 Organization 43 5.3.3 Operations 44 5.3.4 Dynamic Threshold Adjustment 45 5.4 Evaluation Methodology 48 5.4.1 Simulator Configuration 48 5.4.2 Workloads 50 5.5 Single-Core Evaluations 51 5.5.1 Energy Consumption and Speedup 51 5.5.2 Energy Breakdown 53 5.5.3 Coverage and Accuracy 54 5.5.4 Sensitivity to Write Intensity Threshold 55 5.5.5 Impact of Dynamic Set Sampling 55 5.5.6 Results for Non-Write-Intensive Workloads 56 5.6 Multicore Evaluations 57 5.7 Summary 59 Chapter 6 Dead Write Prediction Assisted STT-RAM Cache 61 6.1 Motivation 62 6.1.1 Energy Impact of Inefficient Write Operations 62 6.1.2 Limitations of Existing Approaches 63 6.1.3 Potential of Dead Writes 64 6.2 Dead Write Classification 65 6.2.1 Dead-on-Arrival Fills 65 6.2.2 Dead-Value Fills 66 6.2.3 Closing Writes 66 6.2.4 Decomposition 67 6.3 Dead Write Prediction Assisted STT-RAM Cache Architecture 68 6.3.1 Dead Write Prediction 68 6.3.2 Bidirectional Bypass 71 6.4 Evaluation Methodology 72 6.4.1 Simulation Configuration 72 6.4.2 Workloads 74 6.5 Evaluation for Single-Core Systems 75 6.5.1 Energy Consumption and Speedup 75 6.5.2 Coverage and Accuracy 78 6.5.3 Sensitivity to Signature 78 6.5.4 Sensitivity to Update Policy 80 6.5.5 Implications of Device-/Circuit-Level Techniques for Write Energy Reduction 80 6.5.6 Impact of Prefetching 80 6.6 Evaluation for Multi-Core Systems 81 6.6.1 Energy Consumption and Speedup 81 6.6.2 Application to Inclusive Caches 83 6.6.3 Application to Three-Level Cache Hierarchy 84 6.7 Summary 85 Chapter 7 Link Power Management for Hybrid Memory Cubes 87 7.1 Background and Motivation 88 7.1.1 Hybrid Memory Cube 88 7.1.2 Motivation 89 7.2 HMC Link Power Management 91 7.2.1 Link Delay Monitor 91 7.2.2 Power State Transition 94 7.2.3 Overhead 95 7.3 Two-Level Prefetching 95 7.4 Application to Multi-HMC Systems 97 7.5 Experiments 98 7.5.1 Methodology 98 7.5.2 Link Energy Consumption and Speedup 100 7.5.3 HMC Energy Consumption 102 7.5.4 Runtime Behavior of LPM 102 7.5.5 Sensitivity to Slowdown Threshold 104 7.5.6 LPM without Prefetching 104 7.5.7 Impact of Prefetching on Link Traffic 105 7.5.8 On-Chip Prefetcher Aggressiveness in 2LP 107 7.5.9 Tighter Off-Chip Bandwidth Margin 107 7.5.10 Multithreaded Workloads 108 7.5.11 Multi-HMC Systems 109 7.6 Summary 111 Chapter 8 Tesseract PIM System for Parallel Graph Processing 113 8.1 Background and Motivation 115 8.1.1 Large-Scale Graph Processing 115 8.1.2 Graph Processing on Conventional Systems 117 8.1.3 Processing-in-Memory 118 8.2 Tesseract Architecture 119 8.2.1 Overview 119 8.2.2 Remote Function Call via Message Passing 122 8.2.3 Prefetching 124 8.2.4 Programming Interface 126 8.2.5 Application Mapping 127 8.3 Evaluation Methodology 128 8.3.1 Simulation Configuration 128 8.3.2 Workloads 129 8.4 Evaluation Results 130 8.4.1 Performance 130 8.4.2 Iso-Bandwidth Comparison 133 8.4.3 Execution Time Breakdown 134 8.4.4 Prefetch Efficiency 134 8.4.5 Scalability 135 8.4.6 Effect of Higher Off-Chip Network Bandwidth 136 8.4.7 Effect of Better Graph Distribution 137 8.4.8 Energy/Power Consumption and Thermal Analysis 138 8.5 Summary 139 Chapter 9 PIM-Enabled Instructions 141 9.1 Potential of ISA Extensions as the PIM Interface 143 9.2 PIM Abstraction 145 9.2.1 Operations 145 9.2.2 Memory Model 147 9.2.3 Software Modification 148 9.3 Architecture 148 9.3.1 Overview 148 9.3.2 PEI Computation Unit (PCU) 149 9.3.3 PEI Management Unit (PMU) 150 9.3.4 Virtual Memory Support 153 9.3.5 PEI Execution 153 9.3.6 Comparison with Active Memory Operations 154 9.4 Target Applications for Case Study 155 9.4.1 Large-Scale Graph Processing 155 9.4.2 In-Memory Data Analytics 156 9.4.3 Machine Learning and Data Mining 157 9.4.4 Operation Summary 157 9.5 Evaluation Methodology 158 9.5.1 Simulation Configuration 158 9.5.2 Workloads 159 9.6 Evaluation Results 159 9.6.1 Performance 160 9.6.2 Sensitivity to Input Size 163 9.6.3 Multiprogrammed Workloads 164 9.6.4 Balanced Dispatch: Idea and Evaluation 165 9.6.5 Design Space Exploration for PCUs 165 9.6.6 Performance Overhead of the PMU 167 9.6.7 Energy, Area, and Thermal Issues 167 9.7 Summary 168 Chapter 10 Aggregation-in-Memory 171 10.1 Motivation 173 10.1.1 Rethinking PIM for Energy Efficiency 173 10.1.2 Aggregation as PIM Operations 174 10.2 Architecture 176 10.2.1 Overview 176 10.2.2 Programming Model 177 10.2.3 On-Chip Caches 177 10.2.4 Coherence and Consistency 181 10.2.5 Main Memory 181 10.2.6 Potential Generalization Opportunities 183 10.3 Compiler Support 184 10.4 Contributions over Prior Art 185 10.4.1 PIM-Enabled Instructions 185 10.4.2 Parallel Reduction in Caches 187 10.4.3 Row Buffer Locality of DRAM Writes 188 10.5 Target Applications 188 10.6 Evaluation Methodology 190 10.6.1 Simulation Configuration 190 10.6.2 Hardware Overhead 191 10.6.3 Workloads 192 10.7 Evaluation Results 192 10.7.1 Energy Consumption and Performance 192 10.7.2 Dynamic Energy Breakdown 196 10.7.3 Comparison with Aggressive Writeback 197 10.7.4 Multiprogrammed Workloads 198 10.7.5 Comparison with Intrinsic-based Code 198 10.8 Summary 199 Chapter 11 Conclusion 201 11.1 Energy-Efficient On-Chip Caches based on STT-RAM 202 11.2 Intelligent Main Memory based on Logic-Enabled DRAM 203 Bibliography 205 요약 227Docto

Tuning the Computational Effort: An Adaptive Accuracy-aware Approach Across System Layers

This thesis introduces a novel methodology to realize accuracy-aware systems, which will help designers integrate accuracy awareness into their systems. It proposes an adaptive accuracy-aware approach across system layers that addresses current challenges in that domain, combining and tuning accuracy-aware methods on different system layers. To widen the scope of accuracy-aware computing including approximate computing for other domains, this thesis presents innovative accuracy-aware methods and techniques for different system layers. The required tuning of the accuracy-aware methods is integrated into a configuration layer that tunes the available knobs of the accuracy-aware methods integrated into a system

Generic embedded sensor development: high-speed analogue preconditioning and data acquisition systems

The design of a high-speed, low-cost, generic analogue preconditioning system, which is capable of interfacing with a wide variety of transducers, is described. A multi-purpose, configurable data acquisition module, which is also capable of data generation, is presented. Software support is provided by advanced signal analysis and innovative presentation algorithms that are implemented on a powerful embedded digital signal processor. Precision voltage-feedback and high-speed current-feedback operational amplifiers are combined to form adaptable, front-end multi-stage composite amplifiers. These distinctive composite amplifiers retain the individual qualities of their incorporated parts. The amplifier’s output voltage range is designed to match a standard ADC input voltage range. Easy to implement data converter circuitry and front-end signal amplification components were implemented on a detachable printed circuit daughterboard. A resourceful method of interfacing allows a series of Texas Instruments DSP mother-boards to be accessible. The PCB features single and dual input channel operation, adjustable input voltage ranges and sampling rates under software control. Bi-directional capability adds diagnostic functionality to the already versatile highperformance data acquisition system. The high-speed preconditioning and data converter element’s vulnerability to inconsistent and non-ideal real world effects such as noise, signal interference, parasitics, proximity effects and other layout problems is discussed. Real-time digital filtering, spectrum and phase analysis sub-routines form codeintensive multi-functional programmes that simultaneously display visually and record numerically the input signal properties in a comprehensive fashion. A user directed, automated, calibration software programme was developed to correct for precision-based errors caused by the signal conditioning instrumentation