Performance monitoring for run-time management of reconfigurable devices

High-performance computing (HPC) systems with hardware-reconfigurable devices have the potential to achieve major performance increases over parallel computing systems based solely on traditional processors. However, providing services upon which users of traditional HPC systems have come to depend is essential for large-scale reconfigurable computing (RC) systems to become mainstream. Along with critical needs for management services, core libraries, user-friendly interface, etc., mechanisms for system resource monitoring to support debug and performance analysis and optimization is an important feature in conventional HPC systems that is currently lacking in their RC counterparts. This paper presents the concept of hardware monitoring probes within the CARMA framework for RC-based HPC and examines several design options. Experimental results analyze probe design considerations on a case-study application