CRI: CRD - Enabling Research on Architecturally Diverse Computers

Washington University, Saint Louis MO

Investigators

Abstract

Architecturally diverse computers are those in which a variety of distinct computing engines are mutually present in a system. Examples include chip multiprocessors, reconfigurable logic, and graphics engines. While constructing systems of this type is straightforward, actually using the capabilities of the diverse architectural components to effectively deploy an interesting application is quite difficult. Each of the different computing engines has its own architecture, memory subsystem, language for authoring applications, performance capabilities and limitations, algorithmic strengths and weaknesses, and communities of proponents and detractors. Coordinating a single application across all of this diversity is a daunting task. Auto-Pipe is an application development environment that is designed to support the exploitation of a wide variety of computing engines in the execution of real-world applications. Auto-Pipe includes a coordination language, compiler, simulator, deployment tool, and performance monitor. Application authors compose algorithm kernels into streaming applications and the development environment eases the tasks of specifying the required data communications, debugging the composed application, mapping the kernels to computational resources, understanding the performance implications of the mapping decisions, and deploying the resulting application on the architecturally diverse computer system. Auto-Pipe is being developed as a community resource to enable the middleware and computational science communities to effectively use architecturally diverse computers.