Customizable Domain-Specific Computing

“这项奖励是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。”可定制的特定领域计算为了满足不断增长的计算需求并克服功率密度的限制，计算行业已经进入并行化时代，将数十到数百个计算核心集成到单个处理器中；成百上千的计算服务器连接在仓库规模的数据中心。然而，这种高度并行的通用计算系统在性能、能源、散热、空间和成本方面仍然面临着严峻的挑战。在本项目中，我们将超越并行化，重点关注特定领域的定制，将其作为下一个颠覆性技术，为重要的应用程序领域带来数量级的功率性能效率改进。该项目的智力价值包括开发一种通用的方法，用于创建新颖的可定制架构平台和相关的编译工具和运行时管理环境，以支持特定领域的计算，以便：1)实现特定领域应用程序的数量级计算效率提高；2)证明这种改进可以在对设计生产力影响很小或没有影响的情况下获得，因此它可以在广泛的应用领域中部署。我们提出的特定领域的可定制计算平台包括：1)广泛的可定制计算元素，从异构固定核心到粗粒度可定制核心，再到细粒度现场可编程电路结构；2)可定制的高性能射频互连；3)用于应用程序开发的高度自动化的编译工具和运行时管理软件系统；4)一种通用的、可重用的方法，用于适用于不同领域的可定制计算。通过结合这些关键功能，我们将交付一个针对特定应用程序领域定制的超级盒中计算机，以实现该领域的颠覆性创新。该方法将在医疗保健中的几个重要应用领域中进行演示。该项目的广泛影响将由定制计算带来的新数字革命来衡量。鉴于医疗保健对国民经济和生活质量问题的重大影响，我们将展示在医疗保健领域拟议研究的可行性和优势。特别是，我们致力于彻底改变医学成像和血流动力学建模在医疗保健中的作用，为预防、诊断和治疗程序提供更具成本效益、更便捷的解决方案，从而显著提高医疗保健质量、效率和患者预后。该项目更广泛的影响还包括研究与教育的整合，通过我们新成立的领域特定计算中心（CSDC）的研究人员共同开发和共享的几门新课程，使研究生，本科生和高中生接触到该项目的新概念和研究。暑期研究奖学金项目将由CSDC提供，以支持高中生和本科生。我们的目标是培养新一代的学生，为定制化并行化和计算做好准备，并能有效地将这些技术应用于我们社会的许多领域，从而进一步推动数字革命。通过与关注多样性的校园组织（如加州大学洛杉矶分校工程与多样性卓越中心）合作，正在做出特别努力，以吸引各级代表性不足的学生。这项研究将由四所大学合作进行：加州大学洛杉矶分校（牵头机构）、莱斯大学、加州大学圣巴巴拉分校和俄亥俄州立大学。研究团队由一群具有不同背景的高成就研究人员组成，包括计算机科学与工程、电子工程、医学和应用数学。欲了解更多信息，请访问http://cdsc.cs.ucla.edu。

"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009(Public Law 111-5)."Customizable Domain-Specific ComputingTo meet ever-increasing computing needs and overcome power density limitations, the computing industry has entered the era of parallelization, with tens to hundreds of computing cores integrated into a single processor; and hundreds to thousands of computing servers connected in warehouse-scale data centers. However, such highly parallel, general-purpose computing systems still face serious challenges in terms of performance, energy, heat dissipation, space, and cost. In this project we look beyond parallelization and focus on domain-specific customization as the next disruptive technology to bring orders-of-magnitude power-performance efficiency improvement to important application domains. The intellectual merit of this project includes development of a general methodology for creating novel customizable architecture platforms and the associated compilation tools and runtime management environment to support domain-specific computing to: 1) achieve orders-of-magnitude computing efficiency improvement for applications in a specific domain; and 2) demon-strate that such improvement can be obtained with little or no impact on design productivity, so that it can be deployed in a wide range of application domains. Our proposed domain-specific customizable computing platform includes: 1) a wide range of customizable computing elements, from heterogeneous fixed cores to coarse-grain customizable cores, and to fine-grain field-programmable circuit fabrics; 2) customizable high-performance radio frequency interconnects; 3) highly automated compilation tools and runtime management software systems for application development; and 4) a general, reusable methodology for customizable computing applicable across different domains. By combining these critical capabilities, we shall deliver a super-computer-in-a-box that is customized to a particular application domain to enable disruptive innovations in that domain. This approach will be demonstrated in several important application domains in healthcare. The broader impact of this project will be measured by the new digital revolution enabled by customized computing. We will demonstrate the feasibility and advantages of the proposed research in the domain of healthcare, given its significant impact on the national economy and quality of life issues. In particular, we focus our effort on revolutionizing the role of medical imaging and hemodynamic modeling in healthcare, providing much more cost-efficient, convenient solutions for preventative, diagnostic, and therapeutic procedures to dramatically improve healthcare quality, efficiency, and patient outcomes. The broader impact of this project also includes the integration of research and education, exposing graduate, undergraduate, and high school stu-dents to the new concepts and research from this project via several new courses jointly developed and shared by researchers in our newly established Center for Domain-Specific Computing (CSDC). Summer research fellowship programs to support high school and undergraduate students will be provided by CSDC. Our goal is to train a new generation of students who are prepared for customized parallelization and computing, and can effectively apply such techniques to many areas of our society, thus furthering the digital revolution. Special efforts are being made to attract underrepresented students at all levels via partnerships with campus organizations focused on diversity, such as the UCLA Center for Excellence in Engineering and Diversity.This research will be carried out as a collaborative effort between four universities: UCLA (the lead institution), Rice, UC Santa Barbara, and Ohio State. The research team consists of a group of highly accomplished researchers with diversified backgrounds, including computer science and engineering, electrical engineering, medicine, and applied mathematics. For more information, please visit http://cdsc.cs.ucla.edu.