Customizable Domain-Specific Computing

该奖项是根据2009年《美国复苏和再投资法案》(Public Law 111-5)资助的。可定制的领域特定计算为了满足不断增长的计算需求和克服功率密度限制，计算行业进入了并行化时代，数十到数百个计算核心集成到一个处理器中；以及数百到数千台计算服务器连接在仓库级的数据中心。然而，这种高度并行的通用计算系统在性能、能量、散热、空间和成本方面仍然面临着严峻的挑战。在这个项目中，我们将目光投向并行化之外，将重点放在特定于域的定制上，将其作为下一项颠覆性技术，为重要的应用程序领域带来数量级的性能效率提升。该项目的智力优势包括开发一种通用方法来创建新颖的可定制体系结构平台以及相关的编译工具和运行时管理环境，以支持特定领域的计算：1)实现特定领域中的应用程序的计算效率提高数量级；以及2)表明这种改进可以在对设计生产力影响很小或没有影响的情况下获得，从而可以部署在广泛的应用领域中。我们建议的针对特定领域的可定制计算平台包括：1)广泛的可定制计算元素，从异类固定内核到粗粒度可定制内核，再到细粒度的现场可编程电路结构；2)可定制的高性能射频互连；3)用于应用程序开发的高度自动化的编译工具和运行时管理软件系统；以及4)适用于跨不同领域的可定制计算的通用、可重复使用的方法。通过将这些关键功能结合在一起，我们将提供针对特定应用领域定制的超级计算机一体机，以实现该领域的颠覆性创新。这种方法将在医疗保健的几个重要应用领域进行演示。该项目的更广泛影响将通过定制计算带来的新数字革命来衡量。鉴于其对国民经济和生活质量问题的重大影响，我们将论证拟议中的研究在医疗保健领域的可行性和优势。特别是，我们专注于彻底改变医疗成像和血流动力学建模在医疗保健中的作用，为预防、诊断和治疗程序提供更具成本效益、更方便的解决方案，以显著提高医疗保健质量、效率和患者预后。该项目的更广泛影响还包括研究和教育的整合，通过由我们新成立的特定领域计算中心(CSDC)的研究人员共同开发和分享的几门新课程，让研究生、本科生和高中生接触到来自该项目的新概念和研究。CSDC将为高中生和本科生提供暑期研究奖学金项目。我们的目标是培养新一代学生，他们为定制的并行和计算做好准备，并能够有效地将这些技术应用于我们社会的许多领域，从而进一步推动数字革命。通过与加州大学洛杉矶分校工程和多元化卓越中心等专注于多样性的校园组织合作，正在做出特别努力，以吸引各级代表性不足的学生。这项研究将由四所大学合作进行：加州大学洛杉矶分校(牵头机构)、赖斯、加州大学圣巴巴拉分校和俄亥俄州立大学。研究团队由一批具有不同背景的高成就研究人员组成，包括计算机科学与工程、电气工程、医学和应用数学。欲了解更多信息，请访问网址：http://cdsc.cs.ucla.edu.。

"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009(Public Law 111-5)."Customizable Domain-Specific ComputingTo meet ever-increasing computing needs and overcome power density limitations, the computing industry has entered the era of parallelization, with tens to hundreds of computing cores integrated into a single processor; and hundreds to thousands of computing servers connected in warehouse-scale data centers. However, such highly parallel, general-purpose computing systems still face serious challenges in terms of performance, energy, heat dissipation, space, and cost. In this project we look beyond parallelization and focus on domain-specific customization as the next disruptive technology to bring orders-of-magnitude power-performance efficiency improvement to important application domains. The intellectual merit of this project includes development of a general methodology for creating novel customizable architecture platforms and the associated compilation tools and runtime management environment to support domain-specific computing to: 1) achieve orders-of-magnitude computing efficiency improvement for applications in a specific domain; and 2) demon-strate that such improvement can be obtained with little or no impact on design productivity, so that it can be deployed in a wide range of application domains. Our proposed domain-specific customizable computing platform includes: 1) a wide range of customizable computing elements, from heterogeneous fixed cores to coarse-grain customizable cores, and to fine-grain field-programmable circuit fabrics; 2) customizable high-performance radio frequency interconnects; 3) highly automated compilation tools and runtime management software systems for application development; and 4) a general, reusable methodology for customizable computing applicable across different domains. By combining these critical capabilities, we shall deliver a super-computer-in-a-box that is customized to a particular application domain to enable disruptive innovations in that domain. This approach will be demonstrated in several important application domains in healthcare. The broader impact of this project will be measured by the new digital revolution enabled by customized computing. We will demonstrate the feasibility and advantages of the proposed research in the domain of healthcare, given its significant impact on the national economy and quality of life issues. In particular, we focus our effort on revolutionizing the role of medical imaging and hemodynamic modeling in healthcare, providing much more cost-efficient, convenient solutions for preventative, diagnostic, and therapeutic procedures to dramatically improve healthcare quality, efficiency, and patient outcomes. The broader impact of this project also includes the integration of research and education, exposing graduate, undergraduate, and high school stu-dents to the new concepts and research from this project via several new courses jointly developed and shared by researchers in our newly established Center for Domain-Specific Computing (CSDC). Summer research fellowship programs to support high school and undergraduate students will be provided by CSDC. Our goal is to train a new generation of students who are prepared for customized parallelization and computing, and can effectively apply such techniques to many areas of our society, thus furthering the digital revolution. Special efforts are being made to attract underrepresented students at all levels via partnerships with campus organizations focused on diversity, such as the UCLA Center for Excellence in Engineering and Diversity.This research will be carried out as a collaborative effort between four universities: UCLA (the lead institution), Rice, UC Santa Barbara, and Ohio State. The research team consists of a group of highly accomplished researchers with diversified backgrounds, including computer science and engineering, electrical engineering, medicine, and applied mathematics. For more information, please visit http://cdsc.cs.ucla.edu.