CAREER: Systems and Architectural Support for Accelerator-Level Parallelism

在当今世界，应用程序越来越多地部署在带有各种硬件加速器的芯片上，这个CAREER研究项目设计了软硬件协作机制，以维持性能和能效的提高。要实现这一目标，需要有效地管理应用程序中加速器的并发使用，并通过检测、分析和修改应用程序中的任务流和数据流，对加速器进行全局优化。这项研究开启了新兴领域的下一代软件创新，如增强/虚拟现实、智能传感和移动机器人。研究议程由教育/外联议程补充。该项目将：(1)通过帮助在移动虚拟现实设备上重建和渲染联合国教科文组织世界遗产埃尔米纳城堡，促进CS与罗切斯特大学考古、技术和历史结构（ath）项目之间的跨学科研究；(2)为本科生提供在新兴应用领域和硬件加速方面的实践经验的机会；(3)重组本科和研究生课程，纳入跨领域加速；(4)为罗切斯特市学区的先锋大学高中和威尔逊高中的学生讲授计算机入门课程。这个研究项目打破了对单个加速器的传统研究。关键的智力优势在于追求跨加速器全局优化的机制。这项研究是对单个加速器改进的补充。技术方法是双管齐下的：1)设计机制，通过减少加速器交互的开销（包括加速器间数据通信和任务协调）来接近加速度的上限；2)设计系统超越纯粹的加速，使算法能够跨加速器共享元数据。该研究项目旨在开发编程接口和编译器支持，以公开跨加速器的数据流、任务流和元数据共享机会。该语言和编译器由轻量级动态机制支持，这些机制在运行时检测并适应流，以及用于高效加速器间数据通信和任务协调的新硬件结构。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This CAREER research project designs software-hardware collaborative mechanisms to sustain the performance and energy-efficiency improvements in today's world where applications are increasingly deployed on chips with a wide variety of hardware accelerators. Achieving this goal requires efficiently managing the concurrent use of accelerators in an application and globally optimizing across accelerators through detecting, analyzing, and modifying the task flow and data flow in applications. This research unlocks next-generation software innovation in emerging domains, such as augmented/virtual reality, smart sensing, and mobile robotics. The research agenda is complemented by an educational/outreach agenda. The project will: (1) promote inter-disciplinary research between CS and the Archaeology, Technology, and Historical Structures (ATHS) program at University of Rochester by helping reconstruct and render Elmina Castle, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, on mobile virtual reality devices; (2) offer undergraduate students inclusive opportunities for hands-on experience in emerging application domains and hardware acceleration; (3) re-structure undergraduate and graduate curricula to incorporate cross-domain acceleration; and (4) teach hands-on Introduction to Computing courses to students from the Vanguard Collegiate High School and Wilson High School at the Rochester City School District.This research project breaks away from conventional research on individual accelerators. The key intellectual merit is the pursuit of mechanisms that globally optimize across accelerators. The research is complementary to improvements in individual accelerators. The technical approach is two-pronged: 1) design mechanisms that approach the upper bound of acceleration by reducing the overhead of accelerator interaction, including inter-accelerator data communication and task coordination; 2) design systems to go beyond pure acceleration to enable algorithms that share metadata across accelerators. The research project aims to develop programming interfaces and compiler support that expose data flow, task flow, and metadata sharing opportunities across accelerators. The language and compiler are supported by lightweight dynamic mechanisms that detect and adapt to the flows at run time as well as new hardware structures for efficient inter-accelerator data communication and task coordination.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.