Visiting researcher application: Massive Multiprocessor Architectures

这项提议是为了支持南安普敦的安德鲁·布朗教授延长对剑桥计算机实验室的访问。主要目标是进行一项可行性研究，并为剑桥大学、南安普顿大学和曼彻斯特大学之间的扩展合作设计一项战略。南安普顿和曼彻斯特有一项名为用于大规模神经模拟的可扩展芯片多处理器的资助(EP/D079594/01)。经过一年的努力，人们清楚地看到，正在开发的体系结构的潜在应用领域远远超出了最初的神经模拟任务。剑桥大学正在建设一种基于现场可编程门阵列的硬件/软件基础设施，以使许多核心并行计算机体系结构能够(接近)实时地被模拟。他们最近获得了一项名为C3D-以通信为中心的计算机设计(EP/F018649/1)的资助。传统的并行处理系统规模大且价格昂贵，并且提供数百或数千个处理节点。大规模分布式系统(SETI@home等)可能提供数百万个核心，但具有极其有限的带宽限制。剑桥/南安普顿/曼彻斯特的工作首次具有实现紧密耦合、可扩展的百万核心+体系结构的潜力。暂时撇开诸如如何为这样一个系统设计泛处理器编译器这样的基本问题不谈，许多悬而未决的问题之一是，如果我们有一个编译器，我们可以用它做什么？潜在的应用领域包括：*神经模拟(现有南安普顿/曼彻斯特基金的重点)*离散和连续的系统/网络模拟*有限元分析*射线跟踪和渲染*蛋白质折叠预测*数据挖掘，先发制人的灾难预测这次访问将支持构建详细的路线图，描述将要进行的研究；一个更详细的特定应用(蛋白质折叠)；以及将两个活动线程(曼彻斯特/南安普顿可扩展架构和Cambrdge现场可编程门阵列)结合在一起的可行性进行了更详细的评估。

The proposal is to support an extended visit to the Computer Laboratory at Cambridge from Professor Andrew Brown, from Southampton. The headline objective is to undertake a feasibility study and design a strategy for an extended collaboration between the Universities of Cambridge, Southampton and Manchester.Southampton and Manchester have a grant entitled A scalable chip multiprocessor for large-scale neural simulation (EP/D079594/01). A year into this, it has become clear that the potential application arena for the architecture being developed extends far beyond the initial mandate of neural simulation. Cambridge are building a FPGA based hardware /software infrastructure to enable manycore parallel computer architectures to be simulated in (near) real time. They have a recently awarded grant entitle C3D - Communication Centric Computer Design (EP/F018649/1). Conventional parallel processing systems are large and expensive, and provide hundreds or thousands of processing nodes. Large scale distributed systems (seti@home et al) potentially provide millions of cores, but with extremely limiting bandwidth constraints.The work at Cambridge/Southampton/Manchester has the potential - for the first time - to make available a tightly-coupled, scalable, million core+ architecture. Brushing aside for the moment such fundamental issues as how one might even design a pan-processor compiler for such a system, one of many unanswered questions is What might we do with it if we had one? Although applications have a way of migrating themselves towards useful architectures, attempting to foresee the sphere of use as early as possible in the design stage has obvious benefits to the design process at many levels of granularity.Potential application arenas include:* Neural simulation (the focus of the existing Southampton/Manchester grant)* Discrete and continuous system/network simulation* Finite element analysis* Ray-tracing and rendering* Protein folding prediction* Data-mining, pre-emptive disaster predictionThis visit will support the construction of a detailed roadmap describing the research to be undertaken; one particular application (protein folding) pursued in a little more detail; and the feasibility of bringing together the two threads of activity (the Manchester/Southampton scalable architecture and the Cambrudge FPGA farm) assessed in some detail.