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High-Level Programming of High-Performance

Reconfigurable Computers:MAPLD BOF-H2 Panel

High-Level Programming of High-Performance

Reconfigurable Computers:MAPLD BOF-H2 Panel

Tarek El-Ghazawi

The George Washington University

tarek@gwu.edu

http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~tarek

Tarek El-Ghazawi

The George Washington University

tarek@gwu.edu

http://www.seas.gwu.edu/~tarek

Tarek El-Ghazawi, GWU MAPLD BOF-H-2 Panel Washington D.C., September 6-9, 2005 Slide 2

The Question and My Answer

"Can we develop a software-level programming approach (e.g., a C language compiler) for FPGAs that spans the needs of the high performance reconfigurable computing community with amultitude of FPGA-based HPC systems and also the needs of the electronic design automation community with a multitude of FPGA board designs?

My Answer:

You Bet!

Tarek El-Ghazawi, GWU MAPLD BOF-H-2 Panel Washington D.C., September 6-9, 2005 Slide 3

HOW?

Abstraction Design a rich programming model for high-

performance reconfigurable machines

Extend a standard sequential language to conform to the programming model view

Compilers to address common architectural features

Run-time systems to tune to specific machine features

Tarek El-Ghazawi, GWU MAPLD BOF-H-2 Panel Washington D.C., September 6-9, 2005 Slide 4

Programming Models for Parallel Computers

Message Passing Shared Memory DSM/PGASEx: MPI[e.g. +C] Ex: OpenMP[e.g.+C] Ex: UPC

Process/Thread

Address Space

Data Parallel e.g. HPF, C*

Tarek El-Ghazawi, GWU MAPLD BOF-H-2 Panel Washington D.C., September 6-9, 2005 Slide 5

How cont.! Avoid the hype! Need to know that it is hard, will take

enormous time and resources, but REALLY WORTH IT! Needed Efforts

Need abstract programming model(s) to express» fine grain data parallelism and coarse grain functional

parallelism» multiple levels of locality

Need automatic H.W./S.W partitioning and scheduling algorithms

Need compilers to address automatically general hardware optimizations and use reconfiguration to achieve them

Need run-time systems to support further machine specific tunings

Need H.W./S.W. debuggers and performance analysis tools And a lot more!!! But the good news are:

» There are solid intermediate steps» There are works in related areas that can be leveraged