SHF: Medium: Collaborative Research: Throughput-Driven Multi-Core Architecture and a Compilation System

诸如多核处理器或现场可编程门阵列（FPGA）之类的计算基板具有通过路由结构互连的处理元件的二维阵列的特征。一方面，FPGA 具有单输出可编程逻辑功能，另一方面，多核芯片具有复杂的 32/64 位处理内核。对于不同的应用，不同的可编程基板可实现最佳的面积-功耗-性能权衡。该项目正在开发一种大规模多核基板，该基板具有数百或数千个简单处理核心以及将计算映射到该结构上的编译系统。这种名为 Diastolic Array 的多核架构比 FPGA 粒度更粗，但比传统多核粒度更细。为了有效地利用如此大量的处理核心，该架构需要在空间上将计算映射到处理核心并将通信映射到点对点互连网络。为了切实可行，该映射过程必须自动化且有效。该项目通过同时开发硬件架构和编译系统来应对这一挑战。舒张阵列芯片预计将在一些有趣的应用中优于 FPGA 或通用处理器，从而实现更高效的原型设计和小批量生产。该项目的成果，例如具有路由和资源分配相关算法的静态配置互连架构，也将适用于其他多核设计。最后，该项目正在为本科生计算机体系结构课程开发一个新的并行处理模块，让二年级学生尽早接触并行硬件，获得编写并行程序和使用利用并行性的编译器的经验。

Computing substrates such as multi-core processors or Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) share the characteristic of having two-dimensional arrays of processing elements interconnected by a routing fabric. At one end of the spectrum, FPGAs have single-output programmable logic functions, and at the other end, multi-core chips have complex 32/64-bit processing cores. For different applications, different programmable substrates produce the best area-power-performance tradeoffs. This project is developing a large-scale multi-core substrate that has hundreds or thousands of simple processing cores along with a compilation system that maps computations onto this fabric. This many-core architecture, named Diastolic Array, is coarser-grained than FPGAs but finer-grained than conventional multi-cores. To efficiently exploit such a large number of processing cores, the architecture needs spatially mapping a computation to processing cores and communication to the point-to-point interconnect network. To be practically viable, this mapping process must be automated and effective. The project addresses this challenge by simultaneously developing hardware architecture and a compilation system.A diastolic array chip is expected to outperform FPGAs or general-purpose processors on an interesting class of applications, enabling more efficient prototyping and low-volume production. The outcomes of this project such as statically-configured interconnection architecture with associated algorithms for routing and resource allocation will also be applicable to other multi-core designs. Finally, the project is developing a new parallel processing module for an undergraduate computer architecture class to give sophomores early exposure to parallel hardware, experience with writing parallel programs and using compilers that exploit parallelism.