Reconfigurable Architectures Considerable Research into possible reconfigurable architectures
Explore different design choices made for reconfigurable
computing architectures
How design choices affect both operation and
performance CKV
Reconfigurable Architectures Computing applications have • Data-flow • Control flow General Purpose processors • Data plane • Control plane Reconfigurable Computers • Reconfigurable fabric used to implement a portion of dataflow StaticallyProcessing Reconfigurable Dynamically Reconfigurable Fabric - RPF Reconfigurable CKV
Reconfigurable Processing Fabric - RPF
Static RPF : Configured between application runs
Dynamic RPF: Updated during application’s execution
RPF relatively symmetrical and can be broken into
similar cells that have same functionality
Processing Elements
RPF used to implement computationally intensive
kernels also called Virtual Instruction Configurations CKV
Reconfigurable Architectures • Forces that drive a Reconfigurable Architecture – Price • Mass production 100K to millions • Experimental 1 to 10’s
– Granularity of reconfiguration • Fine grain • Course Grain
RPF Architectures Different Systems have different Granularity
Fine Grained – Manipulate data at bit level
CLB CLB CLB CLB
CLB CLB CLB CLB Configurable Logic Block
CLB CLB CLB CLB
CLB CLB CLB CLB
CKV
RPF Architectures Different Systems have different Granularity
Fine Grained – Manipulate data at bit level
CLB CLB CLB
CLB CLB CLB CLB Configurable Logic Block
CLB CLB CLB CLB
CLB CLB CLB CLB
CKV
RPF Architectures Different Systems have different Granularity
Fine Grained – Manipulate data at bit level
CLB CLB
CLB Configurable Logic Block
CLB
CLB CLB CLB CLB
CKV
RPF Architectures Different Systems have different Granularity Coarse Grained – Manipulate groups of bits via complex functional units such as ALUs and multipliers ALU ALU ALU
ALU ALU ALU
ALU ALU ALU
CKV
RPF Architectures Different Systems have different Granularity Coarse Grained – Manipulate groups of bits via complex functional units such as ALUs and multipliers ALU ALU ALU
ALU ALU ALU
ALU ALU ALU
CKV
RPF Architectures Different Systems have different Granularity Coarse Grained – Manipulate groups of bits via complex functional units such as ALUs and multipliers ALU ALU ALU
ALU ALU ALU
ALU ALU ALU
CKV
Fine Grained Architectures
Advantage – Allows data manipulation at bit level
Disadvantage – For large and complex calculations,
numerous PEs are required for implementation of basic function.
Disadvantage – Much slower clock rates than are
possible if calculations mapped to fewer coarse grained PEs CKV
Config cache PE (Processing Element) Garp chip CLBs Modelled after Xilinx CKV
Fine Grained Architectures
GARP Reconfigurable Processor Fixed
Not Fixed
Typically 32 Overflow, Error Checking, Status Checking, Wider Data CKV
Fine Grained Architectures
GARP Reconfigurable Processor
Operates on 2-bit No connection between wires Data CKV
Fine Grained Architectures
GARP Reconfigurable Processor Each PE in GARP’s RPF requires 64 Configuration bits (8 bytes) to specify Sources for inputs PEs function Any wires to be driven by PEs
If there are 32 rows, How many Configuration bytes?
6144
If bus width to memory is 128 bits, configuration
requires 384 memory accesses CKV
Fine Grained Architectures
GARP Reconfigurable Processor
Memory partial array configuration
Dynamically Reconfigurable
I-cache D-cache
CPU RFU Only one VIC
Controlled Config by CPU cache Upto 4 VIC Garp chip CKV
Fine Grained Architectures
GARP Reconfigurable Processor User Source code in C Configurations in Textual Language
Explicitly assign data and
High Level Language operations to rows and columns
Referenced using Character array Initializer Configurator Further instructions to invoke GARP instructions that interfaced with Reconfigurable array Configuration as collection of bits Thank You for Attending CKV
