Throughput optimization techniques for heterogeneous architectures
Date
2024
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Abstract
Moore's Law has allowed during the past 40 years to exponentially increase transistor density of integrated circuits. As a result, computing devices ranging from general-purpose processors to dedicated accelerators have become more and more complex due to the specialization and the multiplication of their compute units. Therefore, both low-level program optimization (e.g. assembly-level programming and generation) and accelerator design must solve the issue of efficiently mapping the input program computations to the various chip capabilities. However, real-world chip blueprints are not openly accessible in practice, and their documentation is often incomplete. Given the diversity of CPUs available (Intel's / AMD's / Arm's microarchitectures), we tackle in this manuscript the problem of automatically inferring a performance model applicable to fine-grain throughput optimization of regular programs. Furthermore, when order of magnitude of performance gain over generic accelerators are needed, domain-specific accelerators must be considered; which raises the same question of the number of dedicated units as well as their functionality. To remedy this issue, we present two complementary approaches: on one hand, the study of single-application specialized accelerators with an emphasis on hardware reuse, and, on the other hand, the generation of semi-specialized designs suited for a user-defined set of applications.
Description
Abstract in English and French.