Event-based parallel computing - partially ordered event-triggered systems (POETS)

POETS(偏序事件触发系统)是处理大型计算密集型问题的一种显著不同的方式。传统计算机技术的发展使我们从几个字节的内存和(按照今天的标准)冰川时钟速度的简单机器，到运行速度快五六个数量级的数十亿字节的体系结构，但核心具有相同的基本过程：中央核心一次做一件事。在过去的几年里，出现了包含多个核心的体系结构，但在一般情况下有效地利用这些核心仍然是计算机科学的“圣杯”。POETS采取了另一种方法，直到今天，廉价、小核心和大规模可重新配置平台的激增才使其成为可能。之前EPSRC的一个项目，BIMPA，使我们能够组装一百万台核心计算机，创造出一种“元计算机”。不是像在传统超级计算机中所做的那样，显式地对每个核心的行为以及它们之间的每次通信进行编程，在这里，程序员为一组核心定义一组相对较小的、简单的行为，并让它们继续下去--通过正确的行为定义，系统‘自组织’以产生期望的结果。BIMPA主要是为神经科学应用而设计的，但辅助研究目标允许我们研究对替代(基于物理的)问题的体系结构的使用，并且我们已经证明了这种方法可以导致比传统解决方案技术显著提高的速度。POETS不是通用的计算技术，但它非常适合于各种传统的计算密集型工程和研究问题，在这些问题中，它可以以几分之一的成本产生比传统机器快几个数量级的结果。本研究项目的目的是探索这一应用领域：哪种架构是最好的(最快的)？如何将它们自动配置为自组织？我们如何才能在这项新技术和新兴的用户群之间架起桥梁？多年来，工业界在计算技术上投入了大量资金--这是相当明智的。如果POETS要成为我们认为它能够做到的颠覆性技术，我们需要解决一个严肃的“心灵”问题，以便商业应用随之而来。

POETS (Partially Ordered Event Triggered Systems) is a significantly different way of approaching large, compute intensive problems. The evolution of traditional computer technology has taken us from simple machines with a handful of bytes of memory and (by the standards of today) glacial clock speeds, to multi-gigabyte architectures running five or six orders of magnitude faster, but with the same fundamental process at the heart: a central core doing one thing at a time. Over the past few years, architectures have appeared containing multiple cores, but exploiting these efficiently in the general case remains a 'holy grail' of computer science.POETS takes an alternative approach, made possible only today by the proliferation of cheap, small cores and massive reconfigurable platforms. A previous EPSRC project, BIMPA, enabled us to assemble a million core machine, creating a kind of 'meta-computer'. Rather than program explicitly the behaviour of each core and each communication between them, as is done in conventional supercomputers, here the programmer defines a set of relatively small, simple behaviours for the set of cores, and leaves them to get on with it - with the right behavioural definitions , the system 'self-organises' to produce the desired results.BIMPA was designed primarily for neuroscience applications, but a subsidiary research objective allowed us to study the use of the architecture for alternative (physics-based) problems, and we have demonstrated that this kind of approach can lead to dramatic speed increases over conventional solution techniques.POETS is not a general-purpose computing technique, but it is elegantly suited to a variety of traditionally compute intensive engineering and research problems, where it can produce results orders of magnitude faster than conventional machines at a fraction of the cost.The purpose of this research project is to explore this application arena: what kind of architectures are best (fastest)? How might they be automatically configured to self-organise? How might we build bridges between this new technology and a nascent user base? Industry has invested heavily - quite sensibly - in computing technology over the years, and if POETS is to become the disruptive technology we believe it to be capable of, we need to address a serious 'hearts and minds' issue for commercial uptake to ensue.