Implementation of multioperations in thick control flow processors

Martti Forsell, Jussi Roivainen, Ville Leppanen, Jesper Larsson Traff

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference article in proceedingsScientificpeer-review

    3 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Multioperations are primitives of parallel computation for which processors perform a reduction, e.g. addition, on values provided by multiple threads into a single value in a constant number of steps. Algorithmically, multioperations can speed up execution by a logarithmic factor over their single operation counterparts. In this paper, we propose an architectural technique for realizing multioperations in thick control flow processors. Thick control flows (TCF) are computational constructs that simplify parallel programming by bundling a number of homogeneous threads following the same control path into universalized vector-like entities. The elements of TCFs are called fibers to distinguish them from ordinary threads having their own individual control. Processors designed for executing TCFs feature a unique frontend-backend structure to provide low-latency processing of TCF-common computations and high-throughput execution of data parallel fibers. Our proposal relies on step caches and equally sized multioperation scratchpads, while on the memory side, we make use of active memory modules. The idea is to compute partial results in backend units to reduce the traffic to the referred shared memory location. The final result is then computed in the active memory unit of the target memory module. According to the evaluation made with our TCF-aware processor equipped with multioperation scratchpads and active memory units, it indeed executes certain N data element-algorithms log N times faster than the baseline processor. The cost of the implementation is preliminarily evaluated.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationProceedings - 2018 IEEE 32nd International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium Workshops, IPDPSW 2018
    PublisherIEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers
    Pages744-752
    Number of pages9
    ISBN (Electronic)978-1-5386-5555-9
    ISBN (Print)978-1-5386-5556-6
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 3 Aug 2018
    MoE publication typeNot Eligible
    Event32nd IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium Workshops, IPDPSW 2018 - Vancouver, Canada
    Duration: 21 May 201825 May 2018

    Conference

    Conference32nd IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium Workshops, IPDPSW 2018
    Country/TerritoryCanada
    CityVancouver
    Period21/05/1825/05/18

    Keywords

    • Multioperations
    • Parallel computing
    • Processor architecture
    • Reductions
    • TCF

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