CSR: Small: Redshift: An Operating System for Pervasive Hardware Acceleration

与当今以通用处理器（也称为中央处理单元（CPU））为中心的系统相比，下一代高性能计算机将内在地依赖于各种异构硬件，从包含多达72个处理器内核和图形处理单元（GPU）的英特尔至强融核（Xeon Phi）等众核处理器到专用硬件加速器，比如专门的机器学习芯片和现场可编程门阵列（FPGA），它们可以根据特定任务的需要进行重新编程。在由许多不同的执行单元组成的硬件加速环境中，程序的执行不再是传统的绑定到单个CPU的线程，而是在一组硬件加速器上调度的小计算的图形，每个硬件加速器实现程序逻辑的一部分。Redshift是一个新的操作系统，用于开发利用异构硬件加速系统性能的应用程序。Redshift的核心是一个轻量级的编程模型，只需最小的修改即可在异构硬件执行单元网络上执行商品程序。Redshift将程序实现为异步调用的集合，这些异步调用透明地在硬件函数之间移动执行。一种新颖的运行时将计算映射到执行单元，在它们之间平衡负载，并响应于负载来缩放计算的硬件图。高效计算环境的问题对整个社会有很大的影响：科学发现中快速增长的份额是在计算机中完成的。随着这一趋势的继续，我们作为一个社会依赖于现代计算机的计算能力。Redshift将为开发人工智能领域的下一代计算密集型应用程序提供基础，例如，语音和图像识别、个人数字辅助、大数据分析应用、基因组和个性化医疗、药物发现等等。Redshift将作为一个实用层实现，与事实上的研究和行业标准Linux操作系统兼容，并将是开源的，直接使更广泛的社区受益。为了使我们的方法广泛可用，Redshift将托管在一个公共可读的存储库中，任何人都可以使用（https：//github.com/mars-research/redshift）。此外，由于Redshift的部分将在开放的国家科学基金会资助的CloudLab和Emulab测试平台上开发，Redshift将通过CloudLab配置文件（https：//www.cloudlab.us/p/redshift/testdrive）进行测试驱动，该配置文件自动实例化运行Redshift的节点集合。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In contrast to today's systems centered around general-purpose processors also known as central processing units (CPUs), the next generation of high-performance computers will inherently rely on diverse, heterogeneous hardware ranging from many-core processors like Intel Xeon Phi that contains up to 72 processor cores and graphical processing units (GPUs) to specialized hardware accelerators, like specialized machine-learning chips and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) re-programmed on demand for a specific task. In a hardware-accelerated environment that consists of many diverse execution units, the execution of a program is no longer a conventional thread tied to a single CPU, but a graph of small computations scheduled on a set of hardware accelerators each implementing a part of the program logic. Redshift is a new operating system for developing applications that leverage performance of a heterogeneous hardware-accelerated system.At the core of Redshift is a dataflow programming model that enables execution of commodity programs on a network of heterogeneous hardware execution units with only minimal modifications. Redshift implements programs as collections of asynchronous invocations that transparently move execution between hardware functions. A novel runtime maps computations to execution units, balances load among them, and scales the hardware graph of computation in response to load. The problem of efficient computing environments has large impacts on society as a whole: a rapidly growing share of scientific discoveries is done in silico. As this trend continues, we as a society depend on computational capacity of modern computers. Redshift will provide a foundation for developing the next generation of computation intensive applications in the areas of artificial intelligence, e.g., speech and image recognition, personal digital assistance, big-data analytical applications, genomic and personalized medicine, drug discovery, and many more.Redshift will be implemented as a practical layer compatible with de facto research and industry standard Linux operating system, and will be open source, directly benefiting the broader community. To make our approach widely available, Redshift will be hosted in a publicly-readable repository, and will be available to anyone (https://github.com/mars-research/redshift). Additionally, as parts of Redshift will be developed in the openly-available National Science Foundation-funded CloudLab and Emulab testbeds, Redshift will be available for a test drive via a CloudLab profile (https://www.cloudlab.us/p/redshift/testdrive) that automatically instantiates a collection of nodes running Redshift).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.