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

与目前以通用处理器（也称为中央处理器（cpu））为中心的系统不同，下一代高性能计算机将从本质上依赖于多样化、异构的硬件，从包括多达72个处理器核心和图形处理单元（gpu）的英特尔至强Phi等多核处理器到专门的硬件加速器，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重新编程。在由许多不同执行单元组成的硬件加速环境中，程序的执行不再是与单个CPU绑定的传统线程，而是调度在一组硬件加速器上的小型计算图，每个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的核心是一个数据流编程模型，它允许在异构硬件执行单元网络上执行商品程序，只需进行最小的修改。Redshift将程序实现为异步调用的集合，这些调用透明地在硬件函数之间移动执行。一种新的运行时将计算映射到执行单元，平衡它们之间的负载，并根据负载缩放计算的硬件图。高效计算环境的问题对整个社会有着巨大的影响：越来越多的科学发现是在计算机上完成的。随着这种趋势的继续，我们作为一个社会依赖于现代计算机的计算能力。Redshift将为在人工智能领域开发下一代计算密集型应用提供基础，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将作为一个与实际研究和行业标准Linux操作系统兼容的实用层实现，并且将是开源的，直接使更广泛的社区受益。为了使我们的方法广泛可用，Redshift将托管在一个公开可读的存储库中，任何人都可以使用（https://github.com/mars-research/redshift）。此外，由于Redshift的一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，该配置文件会自动实例化运行Redshift的节点集合)。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识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.