II-EN: Infrastructure for Computer Architecture Research

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The research enabled by the proposed infrastructure enhancement is directly related to the major challenges that face the microprocessor industry. Dissemination of the resulting tools and results will accelerate the progress of hardware and software multi-core research. It will also increase the understanding of dynamic data reference and branch behavior in computer programs, which as a result, will provide insights into the design of future hardware prediction mechanisms. The infrastructure enhancement will have an impact not only on research productivity but also on education activities. The additional resources will permit the introduction of more simulation projects and hands-on multiprocessor design in upper levels of the curriculum, and at the same time broaden the participation of undergraduate students in research activities. The acquisition of high-performance FPGA development boards and small-scale servers will be used by the researchers at the Microarchitecture Research Insights Laboratory at the University of Rhode Island to support ongoing computer architecture research projects on FPGA-accelerated simulation and pattern-centric hardware prediction mechanisms. Results and tools from the research enabled by this acquisition will enable exploration of architectural innovations in future multi-core systems by providing much needed modeling and simulation solutions on FPGAs that overcome software simulation performance bottleneck. The effort will greatly enhance the ability of faculty and students to do computationally intensive research projects and will provide high throughput for tasks arising from computer architecture research done by simulation.