1,755 research outputs found
The Level-0 Muon Trigger for the LHCb Experiment
A very compact architecture has been developed for the first level Muon
Trigger of the LHCb experiment that processes 40 millions of proton-proton
collisions per second. For each collision, it receives 3.2 kBytes of data and
it finds straight tracks within a 1.2 microseconds latency. The trigger
implementation is massively parallel, pipelined and fully synchronous with the
LHC clock. It relies on 248 high density Field Programable Gate arrays and on
the massive use of multigigabit serial link transceivers embedded inside FPGAs.Comment: 33 pages, 16 figures, submitted to NIM
NaNet: a Low-Latency, Real-Time, Multi-Standard Network Interface Card with GPUDirect Features
While the GPGPU paradigm is widely recognized as an effective approach to
high performance computing, its adoption in low-latency, real-time systems is
still in its early stages.
Although GPUs typically show deterministic behaviour in terms of latency in
executing computational kernels as soon as data is available in their internal
memories, assessment of real-time features of a standard GPGPU system needs
careful characterization of all subsystems along data stream path.
The networking subsystem results in being the most critical one in terms of
absolute value and fluctuations of its response latency.
Our envisioned solution to this issue is NaNet, a FPGA-based PCIe Network
Interface Card (NIC) design featuring a configurable and extensible set of
network channels with direct access through GPUDirect to NVIDIA Fermi/Kepler
GPU memories.
NaNet design currently supports both standard - GbE (1000BASE-T) and 10GbE
(10Base-R) - and custom - 34~Gbps APElink and 2.5~Gbps deterministic latency
KM3link - channels, but its modularity allows for a straightforward inclusion
of other link technologies.
To avoid host OS intervention on data stream and remove a possible source of
jitter, the design includes a network/transport layer offload module with
cycle-accurate, upper-bound latency, supporting UDP, KM3link Time Division
Multiplexing and APElink protocols.
After NaNet architecture description and its latency/bandwidth
characterization for all supported links, two real world use cases will be
presented: the GPU-based low level trigger for the RICH detector in the NA62
experiment at CERN and the on-/off-shore data link for KM3 underwater neutrino
telescope
Automated Hardware Prototyping for 3D Network on Chips
Vor mehr als 50 Jahren stellte IntelÂź MitbegrĂŒnder Gordon Moore eine Prognose zum Entwicklungsprozess der Transistortechnologie auf. Er prognostizierte, dass sich die Zahl der Transistoren in integrierten Schaltungen alle zwei Jahre verdoppeln wird. Seine Aussage ist immer noch gĂŒltig, aber ein Ende von Moores Gesetz ist in Sicht. Mit dem Ende von Mooreâs Gesetz mĂŒssen neue Aspekte untersucht werden, um weiterhin die Leistung von integrierten Schaltungen zu steigern. Zwei mögliche AnsĂ€tze fĂŒr "More than Mooreâ sind 3D-Integrationsverfahren und heterogene Systeme. Gleichzeitig entwickelt sich ein Trend hin zu Multi-Core Prozessoren, basierend auf Networks on chips (NoCs).
Neben dem Ende des Mooreschen Gesetzes ergeben sich bei immer kleiner werdenden TechnologiegröĂen, vor allem jenseits der 60 nm, neue Herausforderungen. Eine Schwierigkeit ist die WĂ€rmeableitung in groĂskalierten integrierten Schaltkreisen und die daraus resultierende Ăberhitzung des Chips. Um diesem Problem in modernen Multi-Core Architekturen zu begegnen, muss auch die Verlustleistung der Netzwerkressourcen stark reduziert werden. Diese Arbeit umfasst eine durch Hardware gesteuerte Kombination aus Frequenzskalierung und Power Gating fĂŒr 3D On-Chip Netzwerke, einschlieĂlich eines FPGA Prototypen. DafĂŒr wurde ein Takt-synchrones 2D Netzwerk auf ein dreidimensionales asynchrones Netzwerk mit mehreren Frequenzbereichen erweitert. ZusĂ€tzlich wurde ein skalierbares Online-Power-Management System mit geringem Ressourcenaufwand entwickelt.
Die Verifikation neuer Hardwarekomponenten ist einer der zeitaufwendigsten Schritte im Entwicklungsprozess hochintegrierter digitaler Schaltkreise. Um diese Aufgabe zu beschleunigen und um eine parallele Softwareentwicklung zu ermöglichen, wurde im Rahmen dieser Arbeit ein automatisiertes und benutzerfreundliches Tool fĂŒr den Entwurf neuer Hardware Projekte entwickelt. Eine grafische BenutzeroberflĂ€che zum Erstellen des gesamten Designablaufs, vom Erstellen der Architektur, Parameter Deklaration, Simulation, Synthese und Test ist Teil dieses Werkzeugs. Zudem stellt die GröĂe der Architektur fĂŒr die Erstellung eines Prototypen eine besondere Herausforderung dar. FrĂŒhere Arbeiten haben es versĂ€umt, eine schnelles und unkompliziertes Prototyping, insbesondere von Architekturen mit mehr als 50 Prozessorkernen, zu realisieren. Diese Arbeit umfasst eine Design Space Exploration und FPGA-basierte Prototypen von verschiedenen 3D-NoC Implementierungen mit mehr als 80 Prozessoren
Optimising and evaluating designs for reconfigurable hardware
Growing demand for computational performance, and the rising cost for chip design and
manufacturing make reconfigurable hardware increasingly attractive for digital system implementation.
Reconfigurable hardware, such as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs),
can deliver performance through parallelism while also providing flexibility to enable
application builders to reconfigure them. However, reconfigurable systems, particularly
those involving run-time reconfiguration, are often developed in an ad-hoc manner. Such
an approach usually results in low designer productivity and can lead to inefficient designs.
This thesis covers three main achievements that address this situation. The first
achievement is a model that captures design parameters of reconfigurable hardware and
performance parameters of a given application domain. This model supports optimisations
for several design metrics such as performance, area, and power consumption. The second
achievement is a technique that enhances the relocatability of bitstreams for reconfigurable
devices, taking into account heterogeneous resources. This method increases the flexibility
of modules represented by these bitstreams while reducing configuration storage size and
design compilation time. The third achievement is a technique to characterise the power
consumption of FPGAs in different activity modes. This technique includes the evaluation
of standby power and dedicated low-power modes, which are crucial in meeting the
requirements for battery-based mobile devices
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On Multicast in Asynchronous Networks-on-Chip: Techniques, Architectures, and FPGA Implementation
In this era of exascale computing, conventional synchronous design techniques are facing unprecedented challenges. The consumer electronics market is replete with many-core systems in the range of 16 cores to thousands of cores on chip, integrating multi-billion transistors. However, with this ever increasing complexity, the traditional design approaches are facing key issues such as increasing chip power, process variability, aging, thermal problems, and scalability. An alternative paradigm that has gained significant interest in the last decade is asynchronous design. Asynchronous designs have several potential advantages: they are naturally energy proportional, burning power only when active, do not require complex clock distribution, are robust to different forms of variability, and provide ease of composability for heterogeneous platforms. Networks-on-chip (NoCs) is an interconnect paradigm that has been introduced to deal with the ever-increasing system complexity. NoCs provide a distributed, scalable, and efficient interconnect solution for todayâs many-core systems. Moreover, NoCs are a natural match with asynchronous design techniques, as they separate communication infrastructure and timing from the computational elements. To this end, globally-asynchronous locally-synchronous (GALS) systems that interconnect multiple processing cores, operating at different clock speeds, using an asynchronous NoC, have gained significant interest. While asynchronous NoCs have several advantages, they also face a key challenge of supporting new types of traffic patterns. Once such pattern is multicast communication, where a source sends packets to arbitrary number of destinations. Multicast is not only common in parallel computing, such as for cache coherency, but also for emerging areas such as neuromorphic computing. This important capability has been largely missing from asynchronous NoCs. This thesis introduces several efficient multicast solutions for these interconnects. In particular, techniques, and network architectures are introduced to support high-performance and low-power multicast. Two leading network topologies are the focus: a variant mesh-of-trees (MoT) and a 2D mesh. In addition, for a more realistic implementation and analysis, as well as significantly advancing the field of asynchronous NoCs, this thesis also targets synthesis of these NoCs on commercial FPGAs. While there has been significant advances in FPGA technologies, there has been only limited research on implementing asynchronous NoCs on FPGAs. To this end, a systematic computeraided design (CAD) methodology has been introduced to efficiently and safely map asynchronous NoCs on FPGAs. Overall, this thesis makes the following three contributions. The first contribution is a multicast solution for a variant MoT network topology. This topology consists of simple low-radix switches, and has been used in high-performance computing platforms. A novel local speculation technique is introduced, where a subset of the networkâs switches are speculative that always broadcast every packet. These switches are very simple and have high performance. Speculative switches are surrounded by non-speculative ones that route packets based on their destinations and also throttle any redundant copies created by the former. This hybrid network architecture achieved significant performance and power benefits over other multicast approaches. The second contribution is a multicast solution for a 2D-mesh topology, which is more complex with higher-radix switches and also is more commonly used. A novel continuous-time replication strategy is introduced to optimize the critical multi-way forking operation of a multicast transmission. In this technique, a multicast packet is first stored in an input port of a switch, from where it is sent through distinct output ports towards different destinations concurrently, at each outputâs own rate and in continuous time. This strategy is shown to have significant latency and energy benefits over an approach that performs multicast using multiple distinct serial unicasts to each destination. Finally, a systematic CAD methodology is introduced to synthesize asynchronous NoCs on commercial FPGAs. A two-fold goal is targeted: correctness and high performance. For ease of implementation, only existing FPGA synthesis tools are used. Moreover, since asynchronous NoCs involve special asynchronous components, a comprehensive guide is introduced to map these elements correctly and efficiently. Two asynchronous NoC switches are synthesized using the proposed approach on a leading Xilinx FPGA in 28 nm: one that only handles unicast, and the other that also supports multicast. Both showed significant energy benefits with some performance gains over a state-of-the-art synchronous switch
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Efficient FPGA implementation and power modelling of image and signal processing IP cores
This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are the technology of choice in a number ofimage
and signal processing application areas such as consumer electronics, instrumentation,
medical data processing and avionics due to their reasonable energy consumption, high performance, security, low design-turnaround time and reconfigurability. Low power FPGA
devices are also emerging as competitive solutions for mobile and thermally constrained platforms. Most computationally intensive image and signal processing algorithms also consume a lot of power leading to a number of issues including reduced mobility, reliability concerns and increased design cost among others. Power dissipation has become one of the most important challenges, particularly for FPGAs. Addressing this problem requires optimisation and awareness at all levels in the design flow. The key achievements of the
work presented in this thesis are summarised here. Behavioural level optimisation strategies have been used for implementing matrix product and inner product through the use of mathematical techniques such as Distributed Arithmetic (DA) and its variations including offset binary coding, sparse factorisation and novel vector level transformations. Applications to test the impact of these algorithmic and arithmetic transformations include the fast Hadamard/Walsh transforms and Gaussian mixture models. Complete design space exploration has been performed on these cores, and where appropriate, they have been shown to clearly outperform comparable existing implementations. At the architectural level, strategies such as parallelism, pipelining and systolisation have been successfully applied for the design and optimisation of a number of
cores including colour space conversion, finite Radon transform, finite ridgelet transform and circular convolution. A pioneering study into the influence of supply voltage scaling for FPGA based designs, used in conjunction with performance enhancing strategies such as parallelism and pipelining has been performed. Initial results are very promising and indicated significant potential for future research in this area.
A key contribution of this work includes the development of a novel high level power macromodelling technique for design space exploration and characterisation of custom IP cores for FPGAs, called Functional Level Power Analysis and Modelling (FLPAM). FLPAM
is scalable, platform independent and compares favourably with existing approaches. A hybrid, top-down design flow paradigm integrating FLPAM with commercially available design tools for systematic optimisation of IP cores has also been developed
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