1. CASTNESS11, Rome Italy © 2011 Target Compiler Technologies L 1 Ideas for the design of an ASIP for LQCD Target Compiler Technologies CASTNESS’11, Rome, Italy

2. CASTNESS11, Rome Italy © 2011 Target Compiler Technologies L 2 Agenda ASIPs and IP Designer EURETILE platform An ASIP for LQCD

3. CASTNESS11, Rome Italy © 2011 Target Compiler Technologies L 3 ASIPs in Multi-Core SoC ASIP: Application-Specific Processor  Anything between general-purpose  P and hardwired data-path  Flexibility through programmability and design-time reconfigurability  High throughput, low energy through parallelism and specialization ASIP is foundation of heterogeneous multi-core SoC  Balanced SoC architecture offers best performance at lowest energy and lowest cost

4. CASTNESS11, Rome Italy © 2011 Target Compiler Technologies L 4 Why ASIPs? Maximise performance  Specialisation  Parallelism: VLIW, SIMD, multi-core Minimise power dissipation  Specialisation  Parallelism: VLIW, SIMD, multi-core  Power-optimised RTL generation Leverage the benefits of programmability  React to changing requirements  Ship first for evolving standards  Remedy defects  Extend products to new markets without an SoC respin

5. CASTNESS11, Rome Italy © 2011 Target Compiler Technologies L 5 IP Designer Tool Suite

6. CASTNESS11, Rome Italy © 2011 Target Compiler Technologies L 6 nML – ASIP description language Structural skeleton reg V[4] ; trn vecr ; trn vecs ; trn vecd ; trn vect ; fu vec; fu vabs;... opn vec_adiff_opn(t:c2u, r:c2u) { action { stage E1: vecd = vsub(vecr=V[r],vecs=V[t]) @vec; V[t] = vect = vabs(vecd) @vabs; } syntax : "vadiff v"t ",v"r ",v"t; image : t::r; } Instruction-set grammar Example: architectural specialisation  Absolute-difference instruction in motion estimation Registers, busses, functional units Application specific data type ‘vector’ Primitive functions: vsub() vabs() Operation pattern: V  vabs()  vsub()  V, V

7. CASTNESS11, Rome Italy © 2011 Target Compiler Technologies L 7 Agenda ASIPs and IP Designer EURETILE platform An ASIP for LQCD

8. CASTNESS11, Rome Italy © 2011 Target Compiler Technologies L 8 EURETILE hardware platform  Communication  DNP  Control  RISC  Computation  DSP  ASIPs: specialised towards the application −Lattice quantum chromo dynamics (LQCD) −Neural network (Izhikevich)

9. CASTNESS11, Rome Italy © 2011 Target Compiler Technologies L 9 Agenda ASIPs and IP Designer EURETILE platform An ASIP for LQCD

10. CASTNESS11, Rome Italy © 2011 Target Compiler Technologies L 10 LQCD ASIP Goals  Increase performance  Decrease gate count or usage of FPGA blocks Means  Task level parallelism (multi tile architecture)  Data level parallelism  Instruction level parallelism  Architecture specialisation

11. CASTNESS11, Rome Italy © 2011 Target Compiler Technologies L 11 LQCD ASIP Instruction level parallelism VU_1…VU_nLS_0…LS_m  VLIW instruction word  Arithmetic operations in parallel with load/store operations  Appropriate mix of n and m based on feedback from compilation of Qphi() function  n*m speed improvement over scalar architecture Data level parallelism c1c2c3  3-way SIMD fits with SU(3) matrix algebra  3x speed improvement over scalar architecture

12. CASTNESS11, Rome Italy © 2011 Target Compiler Technologies L 12 LQCD ASIP Architecture specialisation: complex floating point operations: C + C, C + i*C→ 2x speedup over scalar architecture C – C, C – i*C C * R → 4x speedup over scalar architecture C * C → 8x speedup over scalar architecture …  Behaviour of floating point operations Defined in a C dialect intended for the modelling of functional units Translated into simulation and implementation (RTL) models Synthesis on standard cell library, mapping on FPGA primitives  Vector types and operators defined for the C compiler vector v1, va[4], vb[4]; v1 += va[0] * vb[1];

13. CASTNESS11, Rome Italy © 2011 Target Compiler Technologies L 13 LQCD ASIP Architecture specialisation: address generation Goal: Vector units should be used every cycle, address generation must be done in parallel How: to be investigated, after feedback from C compiler! Deliverables  SDK (Compiler, Assembler, Linker, Simulator, Debugger) based on IP Designer  SystemC model  RTL Model + FPGA mapping

14. CASTNESS11, Rome Italy © 2011 Target Compiler Technologies L 14

15. CASTNESS11, Rome Italy © 2011 Target Compiler Technologies L 15