Visiting researcher application: Massive Multiprocessor Architectures

该提案是为了支持来自南安普顿的安德鲁·布朗教授对剑桥计算机实验室的延长访问。主要目标是为剑桥大学、南安普顿大学和曼彻斯特大学之间的扩展合作进行可行性研究和设计战略。南安普顿大学和曼彻斯特大学获得了一项名为“用于大规模神经模拟的可扩展芯片多处理器”的资助（EP/D079594/01）。一年过去了，很明显，正在开发的架构的潜在应用领域远远超出了神经模拟的初始任务。剑桥大学正在构建一个基于FPGA的硬件/软件基础设施，以实现多核并行计算机体系结构的实时模拟。他们最近获得了一项名为C3D -通信中心计算机设计（EP/F018649/1）的资助。传统的并行处理系统庞大且昂贵，并提供数百或数千个处理节点。大规模分布式系统（seti@home等）可能提供数百万个内核，但带宽限制极其有限。剑桥/南安普顿/曼彻斯特的工作首次有可能实现紧密耦合、可扩展、百万核心+架构。暂且不谈如何为这样一个系统设计一个泛处理器编译器这样的基本问题，还有一个悬而未决的问题是，如果我们有一个泛处理器编译器，我们会怎么做？尽管应用程序有办法将自己迁移到有用的体系结构，但在设计阶段尽可能早地尝试预见使用范围，对许多粒度级别的设计过程都有明显的好处。潜在的应用领域包括：*神经模拟（现有南安普顿/曼彻斯特资助的重点）*离散和连续系统/网络模拟*有限元分析*光线追踪和渲染*蛋白质折叠预测*数据挖掘，先发制人的灾难预测这次访问将支持构建详细的路线图，描述将要进行的研究；一个特殊的应用（蛋白质折叠）更详细地追求；以及将两个活动线程（曼彻斯特/南安普顿可扩展架构和剑桥FPGA农场）结合在一起的可行性进行了详细评估。

The proposal is to support an extended visit to the Computer Laboratory at Cambridge from Professor Andrew Brown, from Southampton. The headline objective is to undertake a feasibility study and design a strategy for an extended collaboration between the Universities of Cambridge, Southampton and Manchester.Southampton and Manchester have a grant entitled A scalable chip multiprocessor for large-scale neural simulation (EP/D079594/01). A year into this, it has become clear that the potential application arena for the architecture being developed extends far beyond the initial mandate of neural simulation. Cambridge are building a FPGA based hardware /software infrastructure to enable manycore parallel computer architectures to be simulated in (near) real time. They have a recently awarded grant entitle C3D - Communication Centric Computer Design (EP/F018649/1). Conventional parallel processing systems are large and expensive, and provide hundreds or thousands of processing nodes. Large scale distributed systems (seti@home et al) potentially provide millions of cores, but with extremely limiting bandwidth constraints.The work at Cambridge/Southampton/Manchester has the potential - for the first time - to make available a tightly-coupled, scalable, million core+ architecture. Brushing aside for the moment such fundamental issues as how one might even design a pan-processor compiler for such a system, one of many unanswered questions is What might we do with it if we had one? Although applications have a way of migrating themselves towards useful architectures, attempting to foresee the sphere of use as early as possible in the design stage has obvious benefits to the design process at many levels of granularity.Potential application arenas include:* Neural simulation (the focus of the existing Southampton/Manchester grant)* Discrete and continuous system/network simulation* Finite element analysis* Ray-tracing and rendering* Protein folding prediction* Data-mining, pre-emptive disaster predictionThis visit will support the construction of a detailed roadmap describing the research to be undertaken; one particular application (protein folding) pursued in a little more detail; and the feasibility of bringing together the two threads of activity (the Manchester/Southampton scalable architecture and the Cambrudge FPGA farm) assessed in some detail.