Computing Architectures and Programming Methodologies for Heterogeneous High-Performance Computing and Embedded Applications

异构高性能计算和嵌入式应用的计算架构和编程方法

• 批准号: 203579-2012
• 负责人: Chow, Paul
• 金额: $ 3.06万
• 依托单位: University of Toronto
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2015-01-01 至 2016-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=569967
• 关键词: Computing; Architectures; Programming; Methodologies; Heterogeneous

Modern compilers and programming tools have made computers accessible to the experts in many domains so that they can develop their own applications. However, the need to use parallelism to get performance today adds significant programming challenges that are not easily understood by the average programmer. Moreover, programming is becoming even more difficult as we move to specialized architectures such as GPGPUs (General-Purpose Graphics Processing Units) and FPGAs (Field-Programmable Gate Arrays) to find more performance and better energy efficiency. Most domain experts do not have the expertise to make effective use of such computing technologies. The plan in this proposal is to work with several domain experts who must have significant computational requirements of a grand challenge nature -- large problems with significant impact. Modeling the brain is one example. The key element of the proposed work is that a computer engineering (CE) graduate student will be "embedded" with the collaborating group that needs help developing an application. This will allow the CE student to gain intimate knowledge about the requirements of the domain experts while helping them with their application. The expectation is that this collaboration will inspire new approaches to computing that will result in novel changes to computer architectures and systems. Most computer architects address very specific low-level aspects of systems, such as the memory, the interconnect and the organization of the processors. This proposal recognizes that working applications are the tools of the domain-specific users. Building working applications on real systems will better inform the computer architect of the requirements for next-generation computing systems. At the same time, this approach to research provides a significant benefit to the domain-specific users by helping them to implement the most efficient and highest-performing applications that they can use to advance their own scientific research. This has the potential to create more immediate impact than the computer architecture study!

现代编译器和编程工具使许多领域的专家能够访问计算机，以便他们可以开发自己的应用程序。然而，今天需要使用并行性来获得性能，这增加了编程方面的重大挑战，这对普通程序员来说并不容易理解。此外，随着我们转向GPGPU(通用图形处理单元)和FPGA(现场可编程门阵列)等专用体系结构，编程变得更加困难，以获得更高的性能和更好的能效。大多数领域的专家都不具备有效利用这种计算技术的专业知识。 该提案中的计划是与几个领域专家合作，他们必须具有重大挑战性质的大量计算需求--具有重大影响的大型问题。为大脑建模就是一个例子。这项拟议工作的关键要素是，一名计算机工程(CE)研究生将“嵌入”到需要帮助开发应用程序的协作小组中。这将允许CE学生深入了解领域专家的要求，同时帮助他们进行申请。人们的期望是，这种合作将激发出新的计算方法，从而导致计算机体系结构和系统的新变化。 大多数计算机架构师处理系统的非常具体的低级方面，例如内存、互连和处理器的组织。该建议承认，工作应用程序是特定于域的用户的工具。在实际系统上构建工作应用程序将更好地让计算机架构师了解对下一代计算系统的要求。同时，这种研究方法通过帮助特定领域的用户实现他们可以用来推进他们自己的科学研究的最有效和最高性能的应用程序，从而为他们提供了显著的好处。这有可能产生比计算机体系结构研究更直接的影响！