Rethinking Parallel Execution, Architecture, and Software

随着处理器从单处理器转向多核处理器，当今的计算正处于一个关键时刻。如果在如何编写程序以利用多个处理核心方面没有创新，软件供应商将无法再获得不断提高的处理性能，而这一现象已经推动了计算机行业40多年的发展。意识到情况的严重性，许多领导者已经把并行计算放在了他们的关键研究问题的清单上，许多研究人员正试图建立在四十年的知识基础上，在这个关键领域取得进展。这项研究正在研究一种解决这个关键问题的新方法，这种方法与并行执行的主流智慧背道而驰。该方法将广泛使用的顺序程序表示与一种新颖的动态并行执行模型相结合，实现并行执行。使用这种新方法的初步经验非常有希望：它可以实现与传统技术并行化的应用程序相当的并行性，有时甚至比传统技术更好，但是没有传统技术的缺点。这项工作调查了这种新方法在各种问题领域的适用性和有效性，包括数据库、网络和嵌入式应用程序。本研究亦将探讨新型并行执行模式对处理器及芯片多处理器设计的影响。更广泛的影响包括各种重要的应用程序如何在多核处理器上并行执行的潜在转变，以及这些处理器的后续设计。

Computing today is at a critical juncture as processors move away from uniprocessors to multicore processors. Without innovations in how to writeprograms to make use of multiple processing cores, software vendors will no longer have access to increasing processing performance, a phenomenon that has driven the growth of the computer industry for over four decades. Realizing the enormity of the situation many leaders have put parallel computing high on their list of critical research issues and many researchers are trying to build on four decades of knowledge to make progress in this critical area. This research is investigating a novel approach to attacking this critical problem, one that is counter to much of the prevailing wisdom on parallel execution. The approach couples widely used sequential programrepresentations with a novel dynamic parallel execution model to achieve parallel execution. Initial experience with this new approach has been very promising: it can achieve parallelism comparable to, and sometimes better than, applications parallelized with traditional techniques, but can do so without the drawbacks of the traditional techniques. This work investigates the applicability and effectiveness of this new approach for a variety of problem areas, including database, networking, and embedded applications. The work will also investigate the impact of the novel parallel execution model on the design of processors and chip multiprocessors. Broader impacts include a potential transformation in how a variety of important application programs are written for parallel execution on multicore processors and the consequent design of such processors.