SHF: Small: Collaborative Research: Coupling Computation and Communication in FPGA-Enhanced Clouds and Clusters

SHF：小型：协作研究：FPGA 增强型云和集群中的耦合计算和通信

• 批准号: 1618303
• 负责人: Martin Herbordt
• 金额: $ 22.5万
• 依托单位: Trustees of Boston University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-06-15 至 2020-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1618303&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SHF; Small; Collaborative; Research; Coupling

The introduction of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) to accelerate clusters of servers in datacenters and clouds provides a great, immediate opportunity to leverage a new technology in high-end computing. With their flexible logic and native massive communication capability, FPGAs are ideal for high-performance computing in the post-Moore?s Law world. Since the hardware adapts to the application higher efficiency can be achieved, and since FPGAs are hybrid communication/computation processors, they can be interconnected directly chip-to-chip. Large-scale communication can consequently proceed with both higher bandwidth, lower latency, and less processor impact. These features are crucial to enhancing performance beyond current levels. The proposed design allows for useful processing while data is in flight in the network resulting in reduced software overhead in parallel middleware and reduced network congestion. The key tenets of the research are to achieve programmable, intelligent acceleration of applications while emphasizing overlap of communication and computation at low latency, while also cutting substantially software overhead. The research project, FC5 (an FPGA framework for coupling communication and computation in clouds and clusters) has several thrusts. First, hardware support for FC5 and investigation of methods of configurability in FC5 to reduce communication latency and support computing in the network are studied. A second outcome is a prototype version of the Open MPI open source version of MPI-3.1 parallel middleware that utilizes FC5 to deliver the features and performance enhancements involving data movement between and within servers, mathematical data reductions, and bulk data reorganizations. Third, proof-of-concept versions of multiple FC5 software models, including direct hardware access, a transparent MPI-in-OpenCL, and an API-based mechanism that exposes essential functionality. Finally, because FC5 is evolving rapidly with major new announcements expected imminently, continued refinement is essential. At least two model applications, Molecular Dynamics and Map-Reduce, will be used as test cases. With the continued consolidation of computing services into the cloud, the potential broader impact is to increase both the scale and availability of parallel applications. The broad range of uses of cloud and cluster computing for commercial, government, and academic applications means that acceleration offered will have a widespread impact applicable across many sectors. The growing acceptance of high performance computing in industry (e.g., fast machine learning) is one particular potential commercial sector that will be enhanced by this project.

引入现场可编程门阵列（FPGA）来加速数据中心和云中的服务器集群，为在高端计算中利用新技术提供了一个绝佳的直接机会。凭借其灵活的逻辑和本地大规模通信能力，FPGA是理想的高性能计算在后摩尔？法的世界。由于硬件适应应用，可以实现更高的效率，并且由于FPGA是混合通信/计算处理器，因此它们可以直接芯片到芯片互连。因此，大规模通信可以以更高的带宽、更低的延迟和更少的处理器影响进行。这些功能对于将性能提高到目前的水平至关重要。所提出的设计允许有用的处理，而数据在网络中的飞行，从而减少并行中间件的软件开销和减少网络拥塞。该研究的关键原则是实现可编程的智能应用加速，同时强调低延迟的通信和计算重叠，同时大幅削减软件开销。该研究项目FC 5（用于云和集群中耦合通信和计算的FPGA框架）有几个重点。首先，硬件支持FC 5和FC 5中的可配置性，以减少通信延迟和支持网络中的计算的方法的调查进行了研究。第二个成果是MPI-3.1并行中间件的Open MPI开源版本的原型版本，该版本利用FC 5提供功能和性能增强，涉及服务器之间和服务器内的数据移动，数学数据减少和批量数据重组。第三，多个FC 5软件模型的概念验证版本，包括直接硬件访问、透明的MPI-in-OpenCL和基于API的机制，这些机制公开了基本功能。最后，由于FC 5正在迅速发展，预计即将发布重大新公告，因此继续改进至关重要。至少有两个模型应用程序，分子动力学和地图减少，将被用作测试用例。随着计算服务不断整合到云中，潜在的更广泛影响是增加并行应用程序的规模和可用性。云计算和集群计算在商业、政府和学术应用中的广泛使用意味着所提供的加速将对许多行业产生广泛的影响。工业中对高性能计算的日益接受（例如，快速机器学习）是一个特别有潜力的商业领域，将通过该项目得到加强。