Aspire Project

Algorithms and Specializers for Provably Optimal Implementations with Resiliency and Efficiency

http://aspire.eecs.berkeley.edu

Aspire Goal: Keep computers' performance and energy efficiency improving past end of CMOS transistor scaling until new switch technology deployed

End of General-Purpose Processors：

 Most computing happens in specialized, heterogeneous processors Can be 100-1000X more efficient than general-purpose processor

Challenges:

•  Hardware design costs
•  Software development 

ESP: Ensembles of Specialized Processors

Future server and mobile SoCs will have many fixed-function accelerators and a general-purpose programmable multicore

ESP challenge is using specialized engines for general-purpose code

• General-purpose hardware, flexible but inefficient 
• Fixed-function hardware, efficient but inflexible
• ParLab Insight: Patterns capture common operations across many applications, each with unique communication and computation structure
• Build an ensemble of specialized engines, each individually optimized for particular pattern but collectively covering application needs
• Aspire Bet: ESP will give efficiency and flexibility

ESP Engines

Optimize compute and data movement per pattern

• Dense Engine: Provide sub-matrix load/store operations, support in-register reuse
• Structured Grid Engine: Supports in-register operand reuse across neighborhood
• Sparse Engine: Support load/store of various sparse data structures
• Graph Engine: Provide load/store of bitmap vertex representations, support many outstanding request
• Richer semantics of new load/stores preserved throughout memory system for memory-side optimizations

Another Topic: ParLab project

资料来源： CS250 14Fall