SHF: Medium: Type-Specific Instruction Processing

这个研究项目开发硬件软件接口，使标准软件程序受益于专门的硬件加速器.标准CPU是通用的，这意味着他们被设计为执行所有类型的应用程序-从视频游戏中的图形处理到电子表格. 由于通用处理器预计要执行的工作负载的多样性，因此它们永远不能针对任何个人进行过度专门化。相比之下，为单一工作负载或工作负载域定制的处理器的适用性较窄，但在执行目标域中的应用程序时更有效。本研究项目研究了针对抽象数据结构的专用处理器：中到大规模数据结构及其相关操作。 现代软件工程实践鼓励使用这样的抽象类型来提高程序员的效率和软件的可靠性，抽象数据类型处理器因此与这些实践保持一致，使软件到硬件的映射变得直观和简化. 通过以易于编程的方式提供节能的、特定于应用的硬件，该研究使程序员能够编写更快的软件，消耗更少的能量。研究活动跨越计算机科学的三个领域：硬件系统和体系结构研究在软件仿真中进行。 这部分的研究探讨了硬件系统的多个方面，包括软件风格的多态性的有效实现和强制数据封装的机制. 该项目是基于一个具体的，性能关键的，现实世界的数据库查询处理问题。 该研究的这一部分确定了硬件加速的目标类型，这些目标类型用于常见的复杂数据库操作，如范围分区。 性能结果将通过直接测量和模拟两种方式获得。 最后，该项目的编译器部分开发编译器技术，以将高级语言链接到目标硬件系统上可用的加速器。 编译器在运行时调整软件，以最好地利用可用的加速器，并将代码划分为通用和专用处理核心。 随着功率和能量成为计算系统中最关键的资源，节约这些资源的机制已经受到重要的科学审查。 这个研究项目的更广泛的影响是利用专门的，节能的硬件中的软件抽象。 通过优先考虑可编程性和效率平等，这项研究努力为可用的，节能的，下一代计算平台。 作为第一个应用领域，该项目的目标是数据库，即存储、索引和计算社会信息的软件引擎。

This research project develops hardware software interfaces to enable standardsoftware programs to benefit from specialized hardware accelerators.Standard CPUs are general purpose meaning that they are designed to executeall types of applications -- from graphics processing in video games tospreadsheets. Because of the diversity of workloads they are expected toexecute, general purpose processors can never be overly specialized for anyindividual one. By contrast, processors which are tailored to a singleworkload or workload domain are narrower in their applicability but moreefficient at executing applications in their target domains.This research project examines specialized processors that target abstractdatatypes: moderate to large scale data structures and their associatedoperations. Modern software engineering practice encourages the use of suchabstract types to improve programmer efficiency and software reliability.Abstract datatype processors thus align with these practices making themapping of software to hardware intuitive and streamlined. By deliveringenergy-efficient, application-specific hardware in an easy-to-program fashion,this research empowers programmers to write faster software that consumes lessenergy.The research activities span three fields of computer science: Hardware systemand architecture research is carried out in software simulation. This portionof the research explores multiple aspects of the hardware system includingefficient implementations of software-style polymorphism and mechanisms toenforce data encapsulation. The project is grounded in a specific,performance-critical, real-world problem of database query processing. Thiscomponent of the research identifies target types for hardware accelerationthat are used in common, complex database operations such as rangepartitioning. Performance results will be obtained both by direct measurementand by simulation. Finally, the compiler segment of the project developscompiler techniques to link high-level languages to the accelerators availableon the target hardware system. The compiler adapts software at runtime tobest utilize the available accelerators and to partition code amonggeneral-purpose and specialized processing cores. As power and energy become the most critical resource in computing systems,mechanisms to conserve these resources have come under significant scientificscrutiny. The broader impact of this research project is to harness softwareabstractions in specialized, energy efficient hardware. By prioritizingprogrammability and efficiency equally, this research strives for usable,energy-efficient, next-generation computing platforms. As a first area ofapplication, this project targets databases, the software engines that storeand index and compute on society's information.