1. 3/12/07CS Visit Days1 A Sea Change in Processor Design Uniprocessor SpecInt Performance: From Hennessy and Patterson, Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, 4th edition, 2006 All processor companies betting their future on many-core More instances of simpler processors are more power efficient Simple model for hardware scaling Moore’s Law and many-cores: 2X CPUs per chip / ~ 2 years

2. 3/12/07CS Visit Days2 Problem with Sea Change: Compilers, operating systems, architectures not ready for 1000s of CPU per chip How do we do research on 1000 CPU systems in arch., OS, compilers, OS, apps? Research Accelerator for Multiple Processors Solution: Create flexible (parameterized) 1000 CPU system from 10’s of FPGAs Distribute out-of-the-box Massively Parallel Processor that runs standard binaries & OS First system based on BEE2 (Berkeley Emulation Engine) - FPGA reconfigurable computing platform. RAMP Description Language (RDL) defines and supports standard module interfaces and execution model. Used to describe “plumbing” to connect “gateware” units.

3. 3/12/07CS Visit Days3 RAMP Blue Message passing machine MPI, UPC, Clusters 8 BEE2 modules, all-to-all connectivity over 10Gps links. Configuration, debugging, etc. over 100Mbps Enet. Initial applications: UPC NAS Parallel Benchmarks. 4 user FPGAs on each module hold 100MHz Xilinx MicroBlaze soft cores running UCLinux. Currently 8 cores per FPGA, 256 cores total. Each FPGA holds a packet network switch, shared memory controller, shared DP FPU, shared “console” switch

4. 3/12/07CS Visit Days4 Computer Architecture & Engineering Core Faculty: David Culler, Kurt Keutzer, John Kubiatowicz, Dave Patterson, John Wawrzynek, Krste Asanovic (defecting from MIT Fall’07) Others active in computer architecture research: Demmel, Kahan, Katz, Nikolic, Rabaey, Smith, Yelick Topics Covered: ManyCore Parallel Architectures and Systems Emulation of Highly Parallel Systems Self aware computing systems Low-power system design Reconfigurable computing Architectures for novel substrates