ITR/NGS: High-Performance Configurable Hardware Using Liquid Architecture

随着VLSI制造和芯片布局布线技术的进步，CPU及其传统片上元件所占的面积已经缩小到可以释放大量芯片面积的程度。与此同时，由于现场可编程门阵列(现场可编程门阵列)设备的速度和容量的提高，这些设备的可重新配置逻辑的使用正在增加。虽然商用处理器在大多数应用中表现良好，但这样的处理器不能提供更定制的方法的性能。另一方面，开发专用处理器的成本相当昂贵，因此除非能卖出很多部件，否则不值得。可重构硬件为获得高性能提供了一种经济的替代方案，因此未来的商用处理器可能会享受到越来越高的可重构水平。这可以将定制逻辑带到小容量、高性能应用程序的触手可及范围内。然而，要实现这一点，需要软件和架构创新。我们提出通过半自动生成定制的可重构逻辑来将定制逻辑的优势带到小容量但高性能的应用中。通过将软核商用处理器与可重构逻辑相结合，应用程序实质上被提供了一种流畅的体系结构，其中计算机指令集的定义和实现、协处理器的功能及其支持结构可以很容易地改变。在适当的软件支持下，Liquid架构可以提高许多应用程序的性能，从高性能的科学计算到低功耗的嵌入式系统。我们的研究旨在开发在不同环境中部署的可重新配置硬件上获得高性能应用程序所需的软件基础设施和方法。

With advances in VLSI fabrication and chip placement and routing technology, the areaconsumed by a CPU and its traditional on-chip components has shrunk to the point of liberating significant chip area. Meanwhile, the use of reconfigurable logic such as Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices is increasing, due to improvements in the speed and capacity of those devices. While commodity processors perform well for most applications, such processorscannot deliver the performance of a more customized approach. On the other hand, the cost of developing application-specific processors is quite expensive, and therefore not worthwhile unless many parts can be sold. Reconfigurable hardware offers an economical alternative to obtaining high performance, so that commodity processors of the future might enjoy increasingly greater levels of reconfigurability. This could bring customized logic within the reach of low-volume, high-performance applications. However, software and architectural innovations are required to make this happen. We propose to bring the advantages of custom logic to low-volume but high-performance applications by semiautomatically generating customized reconfigurable logic. By coupling soft-core commodity processors with reconfigurable logic, an application is essentially offered a liquid architecture, where the definitionand implementation of the computer's instruction set, its coprocessors' functionality, and its supporting structures can be easily changed. With proper software support, liquid architectures can improve the performance of many kinds of applications,ranging from high-performance, scientific calculations to low-power, embedded systems. Ourresearch aims to develop the software infrastructure and methodologies needed to obtain high performance of applications on reconfigurable hardware deployed in diverse settings.