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CoRAM FPGA Computing Abstraction

Overview

We are developing the CoRAM FPGA computing abstraction to facilitate high-level and portable application development for FPGA acceleration platforms. The goal of the CoRAM abstraction is to present the application developer with (1) a virtualized appearance of the FPGA’s resources (i.e., reconfigurable logic, external memory interfaces, and on-chip SRAMs) to hide low-level, non-portable platform-specific details, and (2) standardized, easy-to-use high-level interfaces for controlling data movements between the memory interfaces and the in-fabric computation kernels. Besides simplifying application development, the virtualization and standardization of the CoRAM abstraction also make possible portable and scalable application development.

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  • Our earlier work focused on standalone FPGA platforms (that operate against private DRAM memory) [ Chung, FPGA'2011 ]. Under this CoRAM-classic abstraction, the in-fabric computation kernels interact with only the simple on-chip SRAM blocks for data input and output. Separately, a set of control threads—expressed in a multithreaded C-like language—manage (1) the data movements between the off-chip DRAM and on-chip SRAMs, and also (2) the invocations of the kernels over time. The CoRAM compiler automatically infers and synthesizes from the control threads both the required data transfer paths and the state-machine controllers in support of the computation kernels.
  • More recently, we introduced a soft-logic CoRAM abstraction layer with further elevated kernel and control thread application-level interfaces that directly support the high-level semantics of commonly-used in-memory data structure types (e.g., streams, arrays, linked lists, and trees) [ Weisz, FPL'2015 ]. We are currently investigating carrying the CoRAM paradigm to capture the new interactions between the application components on the processor cores and FPGAs in a cache-coherent shared-memory processor-FPGA system like the Intel QuickAssist QPI FPGA Platform.
  • Funding for this work has been provided, in part, by the National Science Foundation (CCF-1012851) and Intel ISRA. We thank Altera, Xilinx and Bluespec for their donation of tools and hardware.

Students

Demo and Downloads

Publications

  • Marie Nguyen and James C. Hoe. Time-Shared Execution of Realtime Computer Vision Pipelines by Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration. Proc. International Conference on Field-programmable Logic and Applications (FPL), September 2018. (pdf, 8-page version at arXiv1805.10431)
  • Marie Nguyen and James C. Hoe. Amorphous Dynamic Partial Reconfiguration with Flexible Boundaries to Remove Fragmentation. October 2017. (arXiv:1710.08270)
  • Zhipeng Zhao and James C. Hoe. Using Vivado-HLS for Structural Design: a NoC Case Study. Unpublished Tech Report, February 2017. (arXiv:1710.10290, source)
  • James C. Hoe. Technical Perspective: FPGA Compute Acceleration Is First about Energy Efficiency. Communications of the ACM, November 2016. acm
  • Gabriel Weisz, Joseph Melber, Yu Wang, Kermin Fleming, Eriko Nurvitadhi and James C. Hoe. A Study of Pointer-Chasing Performance on Shared-Memory Processor-FPGA Systems. Proc. ACM International Symposium on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), February 2016. (pdf)
  • Michael K. Papamichael and James C. Hoe. The CONNECT Network-on-Chip Generator. IEEE Computer, December 2015. (ieee)
  • Gabriel Weisz and James C. Hoe. CoRAM++: Supporting Data-Structure-Specific Memory Interfaces for FPGA Computing. Proc. International Conference on Field-programmable Logic and Applications (FPL), September 2015. (pdf)
  • Michael Papamichael. Pandora: Facilitating IP Development for Hardware Specialization. PhD Thesis, August 2015. (pdf)
  • Gabriel Weisz. CoRAM++: Supporting Data-Structure-Specific Memory Interfaces in FPGA Computing. PhD Thesis, August 2015. (pdf)
  • Michael K. Papamichael, Peter Milder and James C. Hoe. Nautilus: Fast Automated IP Design Space Search Using Guided Genetic Algorithms. Proc. Design Automation Conference (DAC), June 2015. (pdf)
  • Michael K. Papamichael, Cagla Cakir, Chen Sun, Chia-Hsin Owen Chen, James C. Hoe, Ken Mai, L. Peh, Vladimir Stojanovic. DELPHI: A Framework for RTL-Based Architecture Design Evaluation Using DSENT Models. Proc. International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software (ISPASS), March 2015. (pdf)
  • Eriko Nurvitadhi, Gabriel Weisz, Yu Wang, Skand Hurkat, Marie Nguyen, James C. Hoe, José F. Martinez, and Carlos Guestrin. GraphGen: An FPGA Framework for Vertex-Centric Graph Computation. Proc. Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM), May 2014. (pdf)
  • Shinya Takamaeda-Yamazaki, Kenji Kise and James C. Hoe. PyCoRAM: Yet Another Implementation of CoRAM Memory Architecture for Modern FPGA-based Computing. Third Workshop on the Intersections of Computer Architecture and Reconfigurable Logic (CARL), December 2013. (pdf)
  • Eric Chung and Michael Papamichael. ShrinkWrap: Compiler-Enabled Optimization and Customization of Soft Memory Interconnects. Proc. Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM), April 2013. (pdf)
  • Gabriel Weisz and James C. Hoe. C-To-CoRAM: Compiling Perfect Loop Nests to the Portable CoRAM Abstraction. Proc. ACM International Symposium on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), February 2013. (pdf)
  • Berkin Akın, Peter A. Milder, Franz Franchetti and James C. Hoe. Memory Bandwidth Efficient Two-Dimensional Fast Fourier Transform Algorithm and Implementation for Large Problem Sizes. Proc. International Symposium on Field-Programmable Custom Computing Machines (FCCM), April 2012. (pdf)
  • Michael Papamichael and James C. Hoe. CONNECT: Re-Examining Conventional Wisdom for Designing NoCs in the Context of FPGAs. Proc. ACM International Symposium on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), February 2012. (pdf)
  • Eric S. Chung, Michael K. Papamichael, Gabriel Weisz, James C. Hoe, and Ken Mai. Prototype and Evaluation of the CoRAM Memory Architecture for FPGA-Based Computing. Proc. ACM International Symposium on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), February 2012. (pdf)
  • Eric S. Chung. CoRAM: An In-Fabric Memory Architecture for FPGA-Based Computing. PhD Thesis, August 2011. (pdf)
  • Eric S. Chung, James C. Hoe, and Kenneth Mai. CoRAM: An In-Fabric Memory Architecture for FPGA-based Computing. Proc. ACM International Symposium on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), pp 97~106, February 2011. (pdf)
  • Eric S. Chung, Peter A. Milder, James C. Hoe, and Kenneth Mai. Single-chip Heterogeneous Computing: Does the future include Custom Logic, FPGAs, and GPUs? Proc. International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO), pp 53~64, December 2010. (pdf)